Toto's Travels: A Legacy of Exploration
Posted by Donna Mae Scheib on March 01, 2017
Toto’s Travels: A Legacy of Exploration
I munched on crackers and juice as my great-grandmother held out another pin and pointed to the map on the wall. Yet another country had been “visited” by us as we marched through studies of Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Hanging in her kitchen was a large map, pins marking each city she had ever visited.
She had been the only one to actually visit the countries, circling the globe with her sister and mother throughout the 1960s and 70s. My great-grandma’s tiny feet logged thousands of miles, setting foot on all the continents, except for Antarctica as she always added. Even her “grandma name” was inspired by her travels, settling on Toto, borrowed from the Hawaiian word meaning grandma.
It was now the late 1990s and her traveling days were done, done in the sense of packing a suitcase and hopping on a plane. But the spirit of travel lived on as she and I revisited several countries around her kitchen table, learning about geography and culture, examining old postcards, brochures, maps, and the many souvenirs that adorned her home. An ornate candlestick from Morocco. The oversized fork and spoon from the Fiji Islands. Carved giraffes from Africa. My fingertips brushed countries I could only dream about.
I didn’t know it then, but she was leaving me a legacy of travel, a legacy of exploration.
I inherited her postcard collection upon her death, hundreds of cards from hundreds of moments in time around the globe. Selecting ones with unique postmarks, I created a collage that now hangs on my office wall, inspiring me to explore, and to get outside of my bubble every once in a while.
As an eight-year-old sitting at her kitchen table drinking grape juice, I didn’t have this perspective. Frankly, the lessons were a bit boring and not the highlight of my week. But my mom insisted. Now I’m grateful. Now I realize what a treasure my great-grandmother left me. A world traveler, sharing her legacy with me, sharing it with the generations to come.
What kind of legacy are you leaving?
Everyone leaves a legacy, whether you realize it or not. What’s up to you is what type and how intentional you are with crafting that legacy. Ask yourself, what kind of legacy am I leaving my family? Do you also have travels you can share about? Military service? A legacy of faith? A legacy of creativity, business, or helping people? I would encourage you to start today in sharing that legacy in some small way with your family, especially your grandchildren or great-grandchildren.
Be prepared that the younger generations may find the stories a little stuffy or boring at first. But hang in there. I promise that on down the road, their perspective will change. It did for me, and I’m forever grateful. She broadened my horizons and shaped my mind for the better.
“It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.” – Ray Bradbury, “Fahrenheit 451”