This morning my daughter sent me a picture of Notre Dame, a monument I can't identify, and her lunch of a crepe.
She told me that she's happy.
I wish that every young person could go to Paris - or Seoul, or Johannesburg, or Lima, or somewhere far and marvelous - and have this feeling. I remember feeling it myself, because it's never quite left me.
Bliss.
I cannot get Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's DAVOS speech out of my head. (Haven't read it yet? Here's the full script. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2026/01/davos-2026-special-address-by-mark-carney-prime-minister-of-canada/ I think he's brilliant, and wise, and we would all do well to listen and heed his words. Oh, Canada!)
We are all greengrocers, and we have signs in our windows that announce our complacency. Some of us have big signs that take up the whole window, and some of us only have a sticker in the corner by the door, but too many of us have tried to stay out of trouble about what's going on in America and the signs are visible.
John Lewis is someone I admire greatly, and his "Get in trouble. Good trouble," advice seems spot on, as usual.
Where do I fit on that scale of greengrocers to Lewis? I spoke up (and marched, and protested, and donated) through the Black Lives Matter movement. I've lead the Students Organized for Anti-Racism club at our school, and the Pride Club too. I vote. I donate to various causes, including the ACLU because I believe that our Constitution needs to be honored. I teach rhetoric, and I try to show my kids how to use critical thinking to analyze all of the messages they're receiving, with the skills to parse out the rhetoric from the facts, and hope it creates a generation of thoughtful voters. I pick up garbage on the beach every time I visit. I try to reduce my carbon footprint. I buy toilet paper that is graded A+ for its low environmental impact because it's recycled fibers and not virgin boreal forest (thanks, Trader Joe's!). I tell myself sometimes that this means I'm doing the right thing.
I try, but often fail to do anything meaningful. My tiny ACLU donation and my handful of plastic removed from the beach and my teaching are so small. I never tell the kids what to think - I tell them that if they have all the facts, and they vote their conscience and it's different than mine, I'm at peace. That's true: teachers need to teach critical skills, not tell kids what to do. But is it enough? Am I really at peace?
So I am wondering if my sign in the window isn't as big as some, but if it's still there.
ICE has murdered two Americans this month in full public view and on camera, and it feels very Brown Shirts. It shouldn't matter that they were citizens ("with liberty and justice for all" doesn't refer to citizenship and murder is murder regardless of citizenship), but it shows how there isn't even a pretense that immigration officers are dealing with immigration issues.
Florence + the Machine has a fabulous new album, and the lyric (from Sympathy Magic) that will not leave my mind is "I do not find worthiness a virtue; I no longer try to be good. It didn't keep me safe, the way you told me that it would." We all want to be safe - I know I do! - but the thing is that going along with things and keeping quiet and putting up our (metaphorical) signs isn't actually keeping us safe. We strive for the gifts of worthiness - safety, comfort - and find that we've been sold a bill of goods, that it was always at the whims of those in power to protect us or hurt us, no matter what we did. Those stupid signs in the window never protected us, and those who demanded that we place them there never wanted to protect us anyway.
***
I signed up for some non-violent resistance training today, and then I signed up for a webinar about immigrant solidarity. I gave a small donation to an organization that is doing the work.
It's not a lot, but it's something, and I'm chipping away at the corners of my sign in the greengrocer's.
Alex Pretti held a phone, and tried to help a woman, and got ten bullets. Ten! And by the time he was shot, he was unarmed. ('m not crazy about guns, but the people who shot him seem to believe in concealed carry, and yet they shot him anyway.) And our President is holding the line that he was a terrorist. An ICU nurse for the VA?! A man holding a phone, lying on the ground, with so. many. bullets. pumped into his restrained, flattened body?
Renee Good had stuffed animals in her glovebox, an image that shouldn't mean anything but means everything. She's me 15 years ago, living the mom life.
No. No, no, no, no, no. This may be America but I do not agree with this vision of America.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I am descended from Germans who fought for Hitler in WWII. They wore Hitler Youth uniforms, and grew up and then they wore swastikas. My grandmother told me that it was fun to participate in Kristallnacht. My grandfather said that he was a prisoner of war for most of the war, but when I sent away for his records the German government directly answered my question about that: no, he was never a prisoner. He was a guard in a concentration camp (one of the lesser known ones, a work camp where people died by the thousands of starvation and overwork and injuries from work, but does it matter to them that it wasn't an oven?). I don't know what the rest of their families thought about it, but I have to imagine that if they put their children into Hitler Youth uniforms then the signs in their windows proclaimed their allegiance, too. As far as I know, they were just ordinary people, stuck in a war that the didn't control. I have no idea what they really thought, but I know this: swastikas are not a good look.
There is no excuse.
None.
Because their blood is in my veins, I carry this knowledge with me with every heartbeat. I am descended from perpetrators who participated in great evil, caused unimaginable harm. I am not them, but I burn with shame to think of what the humans who bore my name before me did to the world, and to their own souls. I don't know the extent of the damage that they did - how many did they personally hurt, kill, steal from? - but does it matter? They put themselves over everything that is right or true, bought into the lies, and go down in history as perpetrators. It doesn't matter that they weren't the masterminds, because they also weren't part of the helpers.
I do know that it's scary. I want to protect my job, my little family, my safety. The President just posted on Truth Social that the reason that Ms. Good and Mr. Pretti died is because of sanctuary cities. I - I have no words for that. Does he know what "sanctuary" means? (Rhetorical question, because obviously it's not a part of his vocabulary.)
I'm looking at the pictures from Minneapolis, and everyday people - a nurse who was killed, a doctor who ran from his apartment to help, and then had to leave after the victim died and the teargas was coming into his apartment. These people are the helpers; they swear an oath to do no harm. They want the rule of law - the Constitution! - to be followed. And Trump would say it is them? I see gray hair, and young people, and everything in between. I see bulky winter coats in the cold, and practical footwear for ice and snow. I see people carrying signs about justice, and the Constitution, and decrying murder. I don't see terrorists. I see people weeping, and showing up anyway, tears streaming.
A photo of a woman kneeling in front of a makeshift memorial, her hands over her face, clearly distraught. She looks a bit like me - I think I had that coat once. I feel her pain.
And that picture of a five year old child with a sweet face and a tiny school backpack being arrested... I want to scoop him up and tell him that it's okay, he's safe; but he's not okay, and he's not safe.
I could go on, but you get the point. These are not isolated incidents.
Believe your eyes. Watch the videos - there are more, and more, and more of them, because in a large crowd everyone starts filming. Decide for yourself!
Audrey Hepburn delivered messages to the resistance on her bicycle on the way to her ballet classes. Miep Dies brought food daily to the Frank family in hiding. Ordinary people can do something! (Hepburn was ordinary when she did this, despite her extraordinary accomplishments after the war.)
I want to chip away at my sign in my window. The future will judge me, will look at history and will judge my actions. I want them to - let the facts speak for themselves!
I don't support fascism. I HATE IT.
(sometimes initial capital letter) a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.
(sometimes initial capital letter) the philosophy, principles, or methods of fascism.
(initial capital letter) a political movement that employs the principles and methods of fascism, especially the one established by Mussolini in Italy 1922–43.
Surely Dictionary.com is a neutral source? Can anyone read "forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism" or "emphasizing an aggressive nationalism" and not see America today? Our allies are gathering to talk about how to deal with us, to proceed without us.
It takes courage to speak truth to America - Canada is large in land and national resources, but doesn't have anywhere near America's clout, and it's dangerous to speak up against an ally who has gone mad. Carney and the Canadians who support him (I think I'm going to try to be brave, even just a little bit, and speak up.
Rest in Power, Renee Good and Alex Pretti... and Anne Frank, and John Lewis, and Audrey Hepburn, and everyone else who stood up and said "No."
Claudette Colvin didn't arise to the same level of fame as Rosa Parks in the national memory, but she was 15 years old when she, too, refused to move seats on a bus, nine moths before Ms. Parks. (Parks was deemed a better "face" for the organization, so Colvin was to take a backseat -argh!- to her, but her name was on the famous lawsuit.)
I don't need to be a Parks, a Lewis, or a Hepburn. But surely I can be as brave as a 15 year old girl on a bus, unpremeditated, just sure of right and wrong.
I'm looking for ways to support my community, to use any power or privilege I have to support the America I love: the one that is about a separation of powers, and unalienable rights, and people being created equal.
(And I'll keep fighting for the ERA, because it's PEOPLE, not men, despite what Jefferson wrote. His words reveal the fatal flaw of that document, both beautiful - equal! - and horrific because of how he defined equality to leave out so many.)
Immigrants are people, too. As a Canadian (naturalized American), I'm an immigrant, too. When I walk down the street, I'm unlikely to be pulled aside, my white skin and middle age and middle class and education and location protecting me.
Or am I safe? Good and Pretti should have been safe, too.
But it's time to step it up, to scrape the glue off my sign to remove it.
Please join me. https://waisn.org/ I'm starting here, but what are your favorite places to engage? What are you doing to speak up, engage others, and try to turn this thing around?
Because we can't just move to Canada, even if we want to!
Yesterday Tessa filled her backpack with all of the necessary items for a month on another continent: hostel sheets, a travel clothesline and laundry sheets, flipflops to wear in (possibly disgusting) hostel showers, warm coat and raincoat. She's got a book and a journal, snacks and a water bottle. She's got her small daypack, chargers, a waist belt to store her passport.
She's ready! She's so excited, but she's nervous too. She's never done anything like this before, and she doesn't quite know what to expect. Will she get lost? Will somebody steal her phone? Will she be lonely? Is she prepared?
The answer to all of the above is "maybe." She won't know until she goes. I am certain that she will have deep joy and that there will be days filled with "wow" moments; I am certain that there will be days with blisters and missed connections, or whatever their equivalents are. I think she'll meet people in the hostels (is anyone else traveling in the off season? will the hostels be empty?) and make new friends; I think she'll have time alone and that sometimes she might be a little lonely. She went through a breakup a month ago, and in those lonely times will she miss him? Or will she kiss a stranger on a dancefloor, her eyes sparkling as she spins away?
What I remember most about my own backpacking adventure is the deep joy of understanding myself at a whole new level, my confidence levels rising to new heights as I learned that my place in the world was much bigger than I'd imagined. Some of that was because of the struggle, not just in spite of it. I pushed my own boundaries to go on the trip in the first place, back when to be a woman traveling alone wasn't nearly as common as it is now. I remember utter exhaustion: according to my travel journal, in 30 days I slept on seven overnight trains (never actually sleeping, mostly just sitting in an uncomfortable train seat and jolting along the tracks). I remember getting lost, meeting a couple unsavory types, getting a sinus infection and trying to figure out what would make me feel better in a country that didn't sell ibuprofen (and my shock that it wasn't common there, and new ways of thinking about the safety of some things that the FDA approved). I slept with one eye open in the youth hostels, never fully settling in because I was sleeping in a room full of strangers. I had the tiniest of budgets, so figuring out how not to run out of money was a regular issue.
And all of that is part of what made it so great, and so transformative. Without the struggle, it was just another vacation; with the struggle, it was a life altering experience. I wouldn't be me if I hadn't done that, as it shaped my worldview and my view of myself. My capacity is much larger than I had dreamed before then, and overcoming each small obstacle was a gift to myself that taught me that my limits were past where I thought they were.
These gifts came in handy when life kicked me in the teeth and left me spitting blood, pain, rage. When cancer hit, I knew a bit more about how to stand up and keep going. When divorce hit, I knew how to be creative in creating a new version of myself. In single motherhood, I knew how to create joy on a shoestring. I knew how to build community, find adventure, feed myself, manage a few bumps and bruises.
And I knew that it was worth it.
I feel such delight that Tessa gests to figure out her own transformation on her own trip, done in her own way. I don't know what this trip will teach her about herself: I suspect that my learning wasn't actually that unique, and might have a universal application, but Tessa and I are different despite our similarities, and she will have her own joys, struggles, understandings, transformations. I suspect that when she comes home, I won't know parts of her anymore, and I look forward to getting to know those parts.
I don't know why the struggle is so important for our growth - wouldn't it be lovely if it was all friendship, sunshine, and unicorns? - but I'm sure that it is. I'm sure that both my daughter and I have capacity to overcome struggle, and possibly to laugh through it.
(Flashback: on my trip, a new friend and I took a train ride an hour away for the day, and then late at night we came back. The train stopped five miles from our stop and said, "everybody off, there's construction on the tracks!" and we were stranded late at night. I had my backpack on, heavy and cumbersome, and I hadn't slept in 36 hours. We walked - and RAN! - all the way back. I remember saying "running will get us there faster" and since my friend had a bike, I ran part of the way, my legs and lungs burning but filled with determination. When we got there, I recall laughing deliriously at the absurdity of it, exhausted by feeling proud.)
We do not need lives free of struggle, appealing though it may be. We need to know that when the train stops, we can manage anyway. We need to know that being lonely is a time for self reflection, not giving up. We need to know that we can tough out the sinus infection, take the detour, and find our way.
And how lucky to find one's way on trains and planes, going to concerts in Paris and London, shopping vintage markets and eating take-out in a park. How joyful!
Tessa will have struggles, but she's well prepared. I've showed her that the struggles are part of the story, not the whole story.
Single motherhood is not for sissies. Her dad is still in her life and he loves her and has provided child support, and I do not take that for granted, but when there is a decision to be made I am the one to make it. I've been the enforcer of bedtime and screentime (those days are past, of course) and I've managed medical appointments. I've helped with college apps, and job apps, and plane reservations. I've made a million meals, and I've driven carpool more than I can count. I've given her a safe and comfortable place to live, a fridge full of food, a place to invite her friends (and all the snacks required). I've learned to love thrifting as a way of bonding with her (plus I've found my own steals!). I've been the one to discipline, and the one to help her with heartbreak. I take her on vacation, and I hang the birthday banner and wrap her gifts and make sure that there is cake when the occasion requires it. It has been joyful, painful, wearying, and every moment of it has shaped me. We've navigated cancer and divorce and what came afterwards together.
She's ready. She'll master trains and buses and light rail and planes and such in no time. She'll visit places that I've been to, and she'll go to places I've never been. It will be harder than she guesses, but it will be better than she guesses.
She's ready. I'm ready. The whole lifetime we've been waiting for this. What joy, it's here!
I can't help but think of the Naomi Shihab Nye poem that I love so well: it is only because I have lost things that I know the true joy of kindness. The struggle got me here, so I'm thanking the struggle, too.
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
From Words Under the Words: Selected Poems. Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye. Reprinted with the permission of the author. https://poets.org/poem/kindness
My daughter is 22 and about to go on a European backpacking adventure, attempting to go to 14 cities and 10 countries in 33 days. I'm thrilled to see her explore this adventurous side of herself, grateful that she has the confidence to go to another continent and stay in youth hostels and travel economy class on planes, trains, and buses, eating cheap food and putting in miles in her Converse with a backpack and a dream. She's newly graduated - the diploma hasn't even arrived in the mail yet! - and still figuring things out for the next phase of her life, but I can see how she is determined to have a life of meaning and hope, to avoid a life of "quiet desperation" even if I'm not sure if she knows the passage by Thoreau. I'm bursting with pride and enthusiasm for her, sharing her excitement and eager to support this grand adventure.
But this isn't about her, it's about me.
She is the exact age I was when I did a similar trip: 31 nights, 9 countries, 17 cities in the summer of 1992. It was a trip that changed my life, my entire sense of self shifting as I explored the world and my own capacities and limitations. My parents actually forbid me from going, telling me that I would get murdered, that it was a foolish idea, that it was a huge waste of money and time.
The "murdered" threats actually made me laugh. I was going to Europe, visiting cities like Paris and Brussels, hardly the dark underbelly of some war torn region or crime-ridden drug cartel run location. But I heard the message loud and clear: the world was a scary place, I wasn't equipped for it, and this was NOT how our family did things. It's true, this is not how my family did things. My family instead got pregnant as a teenager, had a shotgun wedding, and never traveled beyond Canada and the US. My parents never got to try on a bunch of careers, go out late at night dancing, or live in tiny apartments by themselves. My parents went straight to marriage and a baby, and they wanted me to do the same.
But I never wanted that. I saw how it was for them, and frankly it didn't look fun. My mother talked about her unfulfilled dreams with me, and my father's life looked bigger than hers because he was part of big projects and got to go to work with interesting people and sometimes do interesting things, but I didn't want either of their lives. I wanted to have a BIG life, one with music and dancing and interesting food and art and literature and so much travel. I wanted to meet people, to push my boundaries, to see the world and learn my place in it, not because I was born in a place and needed to live within those limitations, but because I had explored my options and chosen one.
I didn't entirely understand what I was signing up for, and while I pretended that my parents' threats didn't impact me, they did. I knew that I was on my own, that if something went wrong it would be reason for deep shame, that my hopes and dreams were foolish, that I was a disappointment to them.
Most of all, I understood how I was a disappointment, that they saw I wanted something different than what they had, and that this made them angry. They were ashamed of my desires for me, and labeled me foolish and selfish.
I went anyway. I had no idea what I was really signing up for - I had done so little in my life, and the small amounts I knew were all from books! I had never been to the movies by myself, didn't eat out by myself, certainly never spent the day in a city exploring museums by myself, and now I was getting on a plane to go overseas, where I knew nobody, where I didn't know much about anything... only that I wanted to go.
I bought a copy of Rick Steves' Europe Through the Back Door and read it over and over, committing it to memory. I bought a money belt, and got myself a passport. I looked at a map and made myself a plan, choosing Paris because I wanted to see the Eiffel Tower; choosing cities in Germany where my grandparents had lived; choosing Edinburgh because it seemed full of dark castles like in romance novels. I wanted to see Anne Frank's house in Amsterdam, and the Mona Lisa in the Louvre... but mostly, I had no idea what to expect. I just wanted to go.
And I did. Filled with fear, half sure that my parents were right and I was an absolute idiot, I boarded the plane. A middle aged French man moved to the empty seat next to me and flirted, and I didn't know yet that it was okay to say "no thank you" and then, if that didn't work, to say "fuck off!" so I put up with him until he got up to use the lavatory and the flight attendant said, "Do you WANT to talk to him?" and I whispered "no but I don't know how to make him go away" and she made him move seats. I'm still grateful to her: she let me know that I didn't have to put up with bad behavior, that I could have what I wanted even though a man wanted something else. An important lesson, and I hadn't even landed yet.
As I recall it, 33 years later, the rest was magic.
I wept as I visited my childhood friend Anne Frank's house (because the children of literature were my friends - weren't they yours, too?). I accidentally wandered into the red light district in Amsterdam, and my eyes opened to a whole new world. I slept in horrible bunk beds using my pre-purchased hostel sheets, and I met people from all over the world; in Marseilles I went out to dinner with two girls from Mexico, a girl from Spain, an Australian man, and a German boy in addition to a college kid from Florida. We shared travel stories and tips - have you been here? Oh, don't eat that it's so gross... try this instead! - and laughed and connected, sure in our commonalities because here we were, young and alive and living life to the fullest on our tiny budgets.
I learned that I really don't like Picasso, but the Impressionists were just as wonderful as I'd hoped. I felt something sacred in a cathedral in London. I got sexually harrassed at Hoffbrau House (when I shouted at the man who grabbed my ass as I walked by, he just shrugged and said it was a beer house, what did I expect?) and I'm indignant about it to this day. I slept on a three masted schooner in Stockholm, and I took a Rhein River cruise (I can still hear "On your left, the Lorelei!" in the accented English of the guide). I saw Hamlet's castle, and Buckingham Palace, and the Mona Lisa and the Copenhagen mermaid statue.
But most of all, I saw myself. I saw that I was brave and adventurous, and that I had capabilities beyond my own understanding. I could show up on a night train in the early morning, find a place to spend the night, convert my money, get breakfast, make friends, and then stand in front of a wonder (architecture, or a vista, or a town square, or a painting) all before 10am, filled with freedom and energy.
I learned that I was likeable, that I could make friends with ease, and that there were lots of people out in the world like me, and that I wasn't crazy or alone to want the things that I wanted. I learned that some people didn't see these trips as a really big deal, because everyone they knew did them. My family didn't care much about music, art, literature, or architecture... but the world was filled with people like me who took absolute delight in them. I learned about workers rights through striking, and the different politics of different countries. I learned what people thought about Canada, and about America, as I met people from all over the world who opened up to me, and as I traveled from country to country.
I learned that a baguette with brie, cucumber, and tomatoes, purchased from a street vendor and eaten in a train station, could be the best food in the world. I learned that I would go without sleep gladly, taking regular seats on night trains so that I didn't have to pay for a hostel, was totally worth it if it meant I got to see something new and wonderful in exchange.
I learnt that I was strong, capable, and worthy of these adventures.
Life took so many twists and turns after that: I married the wrong person, and instead of the life of travel I thought I had claimed, I didn't leave North America for more than two decades. Cancer and divorce made my life small again, as I did the things that needed to be done to just keep the wheels turning... but I've never forgotten the lessons. I'm brave. I'm strong. I'm filled with adventures. Art, music, and literature matter. I can make friends anywhere. I am a born adventurer. I can put up with some discomfort if it means that I get to really live.
I tried to teach my daughter these things, too, even if I couldn't gift her with travel from an early age. I took her to local museums (more and more against her wishes, but I tried!) and we went to concerts. We dreamed of travel together, talking about "one day..." even though we didn't know if that day would ever come.
A few years ago, a family wedding from a beloved member, and I scrimped and saved and we went to Italy. It was just as good as I'd hoped - maybe better! We went to places I'd been before, and places I'd only dreamed of. We ate focaccia and pesto pasta and pizza, and we strolled through piazzas. We marveled at Botticelli and the statue of David, and we delighted in the duomos in Firenze and Siena. I saw it in Tessa's eyes - she felt it too, the wonder and awe and excitement of it.
And now she is 22, the age I was on my backpacking trip, and she's going to do the same things I did, but in her own way, on her own schedule, and her own sets of experiences. Eurorail isn't as much of a thing as it used to be - the short plane flights are so cheap, and I guess night trains are a thing of the past. (Reminder to self: re-watch Before Sunrise to relive all of this!) But she will travel light, alone, and stay in youth hostels. She will find adventures, and find out who she really is, and she will dream big dreams. I'm doing everything I can to show my support: buying her airfare, and helping her choose her routes, taking her to the Rick Steves' store to buy travel items and to chart her course. We're reading guidebooks together sometimes, saying "did you know?" and "isn't this cool?" and she asks me a million questions and I give her advice that is 33 years out of date and then we laugh about it and try to find something a bit more current.
(No night trains. Huh. Who'dathunk?!)
And the thing is... this just brings it all back for me, at exactly the right time.
Tessa's graduation from college has done something to me that I wasn't expecting. This feels like the first time since my twenties that I get to be an adventurer, too, taking care of myself and nobody else. Tessa is raised, for better or for worse. It is the great joy of my life to be her mother, but now is a transition to something new in my life where my primary role is to be myself, not to be her mother.
What a strange sensation!
I believe that it is a parent's job to carry their children (metaphorically) on their backs to adulthood, showing them the path and taking them as far along as they can go. But with graduation, Tessa is unfolding her wings and launching into the world, ready to fledge the nest and explore on her own, to create her own nest, to come up with her own plans. I've done everything I can to raise her well, but for better or worse, now it's her time to fly.
She's flying: getting on a plane(s) to forge her own path, to have her own adventures. She's sure that this is what she wants, determined to see everything she can see.
And as she launches, I feel my own lightness of being. She's not on my back, she's out exploring the world, and though I do NOT consider her a burden (she was my choice, through and through), I notice the new lightness. Carrying someone is hard work, and I am so much lighter - it is so much easier to move! Financially, physically, spiritually... it is time for me to look inward and say, "what do I want?" and not "what does she need?" and I can proceed accordingly.
Well, it was very clear to me as her trip started to take shape that I have incredible FOMO, and that my jealousy that she would be having these huge adventures was because I want adventures too. But this time....
I can. I will. I AM!
I booked myself a week long trip during mid-winter break. I'm going to London - a place I only went for twelve hours on my trip! - and I'm spending 8 days. I have tickets to Stonehenge, and the musical Six, and the Florence + the Machine concert. I'm going to visit the Jane Austen Center, the Bodliean Library, the British Library. I'm going to have afternoon tea and cream tea and just tea. I'm going to sit in pubs, and I'm going to go to museums (though my great debate is whether I go to the British Museum, full of stolen antiquities).
I'm going! It's booked, an investment in myself. It's the off season and everything is cheaper, and I'm staying in a decent hotel in the heart of things, still very inexpensive but a far cry from youth hostels. I'm going to wear my wool coat and carry an umbrella; I want to be a little bit sophisticated, not a train hopping twenty-something. No more night trains, I've decided to stay in the one hotel and use it as a launching pad for other adventures (Oxford, Bath, Paris?), enjoying the comfort of not having to haul a bag and of getting to know an area.
Because I'm going back. I'm not going to travel once a decade, I'm going to do it at least once a year. Eight days isn't nearly long enough for London, so I'll return soon enough. If I don't take the chunnel to Paris for the day, I'll just do a trip to Paris another time.
Suddenly, I've reconnected with all those feelings of being 22, of remembering that the world is vast, and that I'm just beginning, and that adventures await because I am a born adventurer.
I found my old travel journals (not hard, filed by year in a bookcase in my study), and I read a couple entries today, and I thought, "Oh! That's me!"
I've changed (oh, the drama about silly men that I allowed; I gave them my power too easily, not realizing that I was powerful beyond my imagination), but I'm still the same. Suddenly, I'm 22 again, willing to scrimp and save to go on trips, sure that the adventure is what I'm born to do.
And I am.
Tessa's graduation is a graduation for both of us. She has completed her education, and I have completed this phase of parenting, and we are both ready to launch. I find it poetic that she will meet me in London for the concert (and for a free place to stay for a couple of days), that we will celebrate her birthday together in the West End with dinner and a play. I find it poetic that we will travel independently of one another, in different ways with different objectives, but that we will meet up in love and joy and adventure, and share our stories with one another.
I don't need FOMO, and she doesn't need my FOMO. She needs me to keep showing her how it's done: she needs me to go on my own adventures too.
I am saying "Go! Dream! Have adventures!" and this is a far cry from my parents threats about what a terrible choice travel was. I do not think she will get murdered, and I hope she finds her own equivalent of a hot Australian to kiss in the moonlight on a beach by the Mediterranean (because THAT is a good memory). I hope that if a rude middle age Frenchman unwantedly hits on her, she'll say no until he leaves, but if that doesn't work she'll say "fuck off" and call the flight attendant over. I hope she discovers a painting that touches her soul, that she finds a street market with the perfect vintage souvenir, that she makes friends, that she is exhausted by her adventures but she doesn't care. I hope she connects with some new part of her own soul, uncovering strengths and stories that shape her for the rest of her life.
I hope I do, too.
She's 22 for another week, and I'm feeling 22 again, reconnecting with the girl I once was, resurrecting her, removing the dust shrouds and shaking her shoulder. "Wake up!" I whisper in her ear. "It's time. Let's reconnect!"
What a time to be alive. How glad I am to be alive to experience this new phase - cancer and divorce didn't kill me yet, after all, and my legs are strong and my heart is thudding and I'm filled with the longing and possibilities of all of it.
Nobody told me anything interesting about middle age, about what happened after launching a child into adulthood. But if someone asks me, this is what I will say to them:
It's your time to be alive. Take delight in what you've done, and then dig deep to reconnect with yourself. They are launching, but so are you, and it's GLORIOUS.
Take the trip. Write the book. Dance at the concert. Be weird in the way that suits you best: join the coven, pull a tarot card, swim in the wild ocean in Seattle in January. Call your friends and share what you're thinking, find out if they're experiencing it, too. Hear your heartbeat, solo after these years of parenting, thudding in your chest, telling you what you love, what you crave, what you desire. Listen to it.
And go. Go, go, go. You won't be murdered, and not you're not wrong for being filled with the desire to drink deeply of all that life offers, to push the boundaries, to try something new. If you're lucky, you can make some of your dreams come true.
Skip the take-out, cancel the streaming subscription, put yourself on hold from any purchases except the most necessary. Use up the wilted vegetables in the refrigerator to make a boring soup, so that you don't waste them. Use your library card instead of your debit card.
And buy a ticket to Paris or Prague, Tokyo or Terabithia, Nigeria or Narnia. Remember what it feels like to be filled with wonder, to feel a song in your bones, to be made to feel small on the precipice of a canyon or feet of a wondrous building or in the face of an artifact that is filled with so much history. Bite into food that surprises you.
Just go. Go, go, go.
It's your time.
