One suitcase is basically always gifts — clothes for nieces and nephews who’ve grown a size since last year’s guesswork, chocolate that survives the heat reasonably well, and whatever specific American thing someone requested six months ago and I only remember at the airport. The second bag is mine, and it’s smaller than it should be, because half of what I’d want to bring gets left behind in favor of more gifts.
Camera gear is its own negotiation with myself every year. I always think I’ll travel light — one body, one lens — and I never do. There’s always a second lens “just in case,” and the case is never actually made for it, so something ends up wrapped in a towel in a side pocket.
What I forget, without fail, is something small and obvious. An adapter. A specific medicine. Once, memorably, my own passport photo for a form I didn’t know I’d need. My mother has stopped being surprised by this and just keeps a small stash of things I typically forget at her house, which says more about twenty years of this pattern than I’d like to admit.