A song on a recent Jerry Jeff Walker CD tells about a young girl in West Texas, raised on “dust and weeds and cactus” who dreams of going to Paris. She longs to visit St. Germain des Pres and walk along the banks of the Seine.

The young girl graduates from school, marries, and becomes a working mother. She is too busy raising a family to think about Paris or her desire to spend her birthday in the city of romance.

Years later, Mom is invited to go to Europe with her adult daughter. Her dream, dormant for decades, is once again alive. The song ends with her buying a new dress and boarding a plane for France.

As a young girl in West Blocton, Alabama, Jean couldn’t imagine places any farther away than Birmingham. The world was much larger in the 1940s, and her family barely had enough money to buy food. Travel was out of the question.

After being swept off her feet by a soldier from down the road, Jean also married and began to raise her family. As time passed, she learned of exotic places, and the travel bug bit her. In the early days it was auto trips on two lane highways, stopping at roadside parks for crackers, Vienna Sausages, and canned pork and beans.

Later, as her kids grew older, Jean was able to visit those faraway places, and she loved every mile. Chicago, San Francisco, and Phoenix made her list. So did Texas and the Northwest. By car, plane, and train, she traveled whenever she could find a companion.

In 2003, cancer took her husband of more than 50 years, and a heart attack took her strength. It appeared her traveling days were over. A cancelled cruise to Alaska seemed to signal the end.

But this spring her brother called and offered Jean a chance to visit the one place she never thought she’d see and the one place she wanted to visit more than any other. His family had a place in Hawaii for a week and if she could get there, she was welcome to stay with them.

After more than 70 years, her dormant dream had also come true. She found the money for a plane ticket and took off for her dream destination.

I worried the trip would be too tiring for her, and hoped she would take it easy while she was there.

As Jean told me details of her visit, the person speaking wasn’t my mother of more than 50 years, it was the little girl from a dirt poor coal mining town who was finally getting to see a world much larger than Birmingham.

I’m sure I made my mother happy a few times; proud some, too. But I never heard her giddy until she spoke of her trip to Hawaii. As she told of helicopter rides, green tropical plants, luaus, and breathtaking sunsets, I was happy for her.

I hope I get to be giddy before I get too old.