Monkey Dancing

Finished off another great read over the weekend and props to BOATBABY for recommending so many awesome books!! I needed the inspiration as the world is conspiring to kill my dreams. My husband, who was totally on board with selling our belongings and travelling, has now taken a promotion at his work and is angling for another. He is also going back to college on their dime starting this week. If he has a better position at work and somebody to pay for an engineering degree I have SERIOUS doubts he will want to take off next summer. I can’t really blame him but I am having a hard time being happy about it.

Also when I told some family members of our plans one of them (who shall remain nameless) got so upset they are talking about having to be medicated to deal with depression. So far this is not working out as I had hoped but I am not giving up… I may just have to adapt my plans a bit.

Anyway… the book is called Monkey Dancing: A Father, Two Kids, and a Journey to the Ends of the Earth written by Daniel Glick. I was pretty much enthralled from the first page.

Mr. Glick had two very horrible things happen to him that prompted this trip. First his wife of many years left him for a woman and asked for a divorce. Then she moved a 1000 miles away and abandoned her two kids declaring that she needed time to discover herself… as if a new sexual identity gives you a life do-over or something. Honestly I was pretty mad at this woman for much of the book even though the author didn’t bash her. GRRR!

The second catastrophic event was the death of the author’s brother, the kids Uncle. He and the kids spent a lot of time with him after he got sick and his death hit them all pretty hard. The book has stories about this incredible man throughout the book.

So Mr. Glick decided he needs to dedicate a few months to nothing but nurturing the wounded souls of his children and that traveling away from the pain epicenter will be best. They go Australia, Bali, Zurich, Kathmandu, Cambodia, Vietnam, Nepal, and others places. His kids ride on the backs of elephants, go through tunnels in Vietnam and get a history lesson, snorkel at the Great Barrier Reef, and swim with pythons in Borneo. Their journey is spectacular and memorable and really what they all needed to heal after such deep wounds had been inflicted on them. By the end of the book I was bawling my eyes out and hugging my kids… it was that good.