Hug your kids, your spouse, everybody you love

My travels have been smooth, whereas my technology has not.

The "old" me would have thrown a hissy fit when my Mac laptop hard drive crashed Monday morning right after I posted the last of the #8 accounts. My in-house, traveling computer repairman, Roger, looked at and listened to it. Though he doesn't do Mac and is strictly a PC man, he still knows the ominous sounds and sights.

My laptop has served me well. I bought it right before I went to Europe in fall 2004 to learn more about the Holocaust for a book. It was my sole source of comfort as I typed in an endless description of my travels by myself through Germany, the Netherlands and Poland, including the Auschwitz concentration camp. I didn't talk to anyone back home during that two-week trip, so my laptop absorbed all my emotions and didn't short out when my tears splashed on the keys or when my fingers pounded in anger at all I had witnessed.

It went around the United States with me when I interviewed Holocaust survivors and cried more tears and captured the priceless moments I spent with them in extraordinary personal classrooms. It was a constant companion when I took a rare vacation. It was there when I journeyed to Myrtle Beach for a long overdue trip of self-discovery to shed grief that had haunted me for more than six years after the loss of my mom-in-law.

This piece of equipment went to Israel with me and collected all the magic, inspiration, images, friendships and endless cycle of emotions that filled me as I was one of two gentiles with 23 Jewish travelers who toured the country. It cooperated and patiently accepted volumes of words and thoughts that I sent home to family and friends to explain the spiritual journey that had transformed me forever.

It was my lifeline with the world via e-mail and researching book topics as it traveled many a day around Peoria. It had been bumped and dropped and scratched and bruised, though never in anger, just sheer clumsiness or not paying attention. The CD drive quit working more than two years ago, but my laptop still had plenty of life as Roger pieced it together as best he could to keep it hobbling along.

It had gone to bed with me hundreds of nights when my brain refused to shut down and had to keep creating and overflowing with useful and useless thoughts and ideas. I think I slept with it more hours than Roger.

It had been the one on which I had written several books, there with me hundreds of hours.

Yes, it had been faithful and loyal far longer than I had expected. And you'll notice that I haven't used the "d" word in describing what has happened to it.

I can't and won't trivialize such a term now because a piece of equipment isn't a living, breathing person.

I can't use that "d" word as a high school friend buries her 25-year-old son today.

The fragility of life has taken on a new meaning this week as I'm eager to get home now and hug my 26-year-old son and hear how he sacrificed sooooo much to stop by the house every day and take care of the cats while we've been gone and how he didn't have time to check my post office box or how he forgot to do something else. Yada yada yada and I'll love every second of it while I smile at his little mustache and goofy goatee and hug him extra for reasons he'll never know ... unless he decides to read today's entry on my blog.

I can get a new computer, and luckily I had backed up almost everything. However, nothing can replace the emotions I have experienced and the lives that have touched me because I chose to live life rather than just write about it. I merely described and saved the memories via the sturdy though well-worn keys.

Today's message is to hug your kids, your spouse, your significant other, your parents, your siblings, your friends ...

All y'all (sorry, I'm in Georgia) will have to wait until tomorrow to hear the rest of my journeys. You have a more important one to fulfill today.