The Gift of the Slightly Unfamiliar
Thoughts on traveling to Europe with a tween sidekick
Hello there friends, long-time readers, fibercraft enthusiasts, and, of course, Mom!
Now in my 40s, I’ve started to reach that middle stage of life. Thus far, my midlife metamorphosis has looked less like a new husband and car and more like a gluttonous desire to notice the present moment and milk it like the highly sensitive toddler that I am. Or something like that.
It’s meant more writing. It’s meant carrying a Traveler’s Notebook and a brass fountain pen around with me wherever I go, collecting observations, words, and passages that pique my interest.
It’s meant wrestling my dopamine-conditioned eyes and swipe-conditioned fingertips from that abominable thief of present moments everywhere - the glowing device that moonlights as a helpful robot friend while surreptitiously commodifying my life force.
I want to be alive to the gobsmackingly beautiful, confusing, humorous, and often uncomfortable reality of life.
You will probably be relieved to know that this isn’t yet another piece of January writing about resolutions. It’s a little late for that, anyway. Most who make resolutions are well on their way to abandoning them by now.
No, this little tale of technicolor present-moment living starts like many notable life experiences: with a fairly substantial change of scenery that just happened to overlap with January 1.
I rang in the New Year in Oviedo, Spain, running an evening 5k with at least 6,000 other cheery-yet-heavy-breathing locals.
It was a welcome shift from my life back home, with its masticating logistics. (How is it that the life maintenance tasks of one family of five can cause a mother to end most days feeling chewed up and spit out by Google Calendar?)
Running along an ancient castle wall was the Google Calendar antidote I had been craving.
My middle son and I were there visiting our erstwhile neighbors, a Spanish family who came to the US last year for a bit of an adventure. Their two boys became regulars in our House of Many Children, where they learned, among other American cultural quirks, that veggie burgers are, in fact, edible.
They became very close with my son Lachlan, who was particularly sad when the brothers returned to Spain in August. I agreed to take him to visit over Winter break.
As such, most of my trip to Spain was not spent jogging alongside castle walls. Instead, I woke up every morning next to Lachlan, who was more interested in discussing if the day’s plans included playing video games with his friends than if we were going to see any museums. His impenitent complaints during our handful of long, meandering strolls were assuaged only with the promise of tortitas, a Spanish dessert that closely resembles a pancake, but with the addition of a Dionysian mound of melted chocolate and whipped cream. Thankfully, Lachlan’s Norman Rockwell-esque visage and persistent eye twinkle made his frequent bouts of fart jokes tolerable.
In other words, I want to disabuse you of the notion, dear Reader, that all trips to Europe are by their very nature filled with picturesque cobblestone pedestrian streets with accordion players serenading you on every third corner.
Even though my tween travel buddy did not afford me the luxury of using the standard, rose-colored, romanticized lens for looking at Europe, I did get a renewed spirit anyway, thanks to the simple gift of being in unfamiliar situations in an unfamiliar place.
In general, I’d say that European culture is fairly similar to American culture. This was less the case when Patrick (then boyfriend, now husband) and I were exchange students in France 23 years ago. Back then, for example, clothing styles were notably divergent; I remember our male French friends wearing pedal pusher pants that Patrick wouldn’t have dared to wear. Another highlight back then was coming across a middle-aged dad on the trail while hiking Mont Blanc who paired his boots with Speedos instead of a shirt and shorts. (He also happened to be singing loudly, and his embarrassed tween kids were following behind him at a safe distance. This makes me think that there may have been more to that story, now that I have experienced parenting tweens myself!)
Nowadays, European and American cultures seem more similar to me, and I can only speculate that this is due to access to the internet, social media, and the sad disappearance of idiosyncratic style due to the ubiquity of fast fashion brands.
But there are still notable differences, especially when it comes to language, food, and infrastructure.
Instead of English, I was speaking mostly in Spanish, which was a brain-enlivening jolt. It had been almost 16 years since I lived and worked in Mexico, and the Spanish I honed there had some marked differences with Spanish spoken in Spain. Totally comprehensible, but it kept me on my toes.
The elevators were all tiny. The plugs were different. Stop lights were right above you rather than across the intersection. Food was served two hours after I typically fell asleep back home.
But damn if I wasn’t shocked when I turned on the shower in our apartment and, instead of water coming down from the menacing-looking, modern shower head above me, it came out from a series of holes directly in front of my completely bewildered face.
It’s enough of the slightly unfamiliar to plop your brain right down in the present moment, searching for understanding (and the way to reroute the water!)
There’s been plenty of research on the cognitive benefits of putting yourself in novel situations: traveling, learning something new, meeting new people. Your brain goes into hyperdrive, building new neural connections and, as a consequence, boosting your creativity.
But like most people, I don’t have the time or money to travel that often.
My hack? Keep up with the practice I started on my travels, but have continued here at home. Go about life with a notebook and pen in hand as often as possible, unearthing the novel in the mundane. It’s always there, if you keep your phone off and your eyes and ears on.
The return trip home has historically been a bit of a letdown for me, like the day after Christmas when I was a kid. This time, while waiting in the bag check line on our journey home, I knew I had at least partially succeeded in keeping my mind open to that jolt of awe when I heard the words, “Where are you flying, Miss?”
And my internal response was, “What a fascinating, exciting question!”
Holy crap, I’m FLYING today! In the belly of a sleekly grotesque iron bird, spewing foul fumes out its rear end while catapulting me across the ocean.
I looked around at my fellow travelers, who were also about to traverse the globe at high speed in one of humankind’s most wondrous and hubristic inventions. They didn’t seem to understand what was about to happen to them. They seemed downright annoyed by the prospect, their collective jowls being tugged downward by the gravitational pull of ennui towards their flickering devices.
A few hours later, my son and I sat on the tarmac, second in line for takeoff.
He chattered on about the airplane in front of us, speculating about its destination and ground speed.
As the fire in the belly of our mechanical bird rumbled to life, I pushed play on Radiohead’s OK Computer and relinquished control. My body hurtled through space as I watched my son’s eyes widen.
He waved goodbye to Spain for a good 20 seconds, his round head silhouetted against the bright window. I captured the gesture in my mother’s heart, which instantly filled with an aching nostalgia for the present moment.
He is nearing his 13th birthday, and we all know that adults forget to wave goodbye to land masses and experiences.
I waved alongside him, further strengthening my commitment to try to remember to live in a perpetual state of awe.
I want to close with a quote from Rob Walker, who writes one of my favorite Substack newsletters. I’ve been holding onto this now that I’m back home, living amongst the familiar once again:
There’s much talk about seeking out awe and wonder, perhaps through elaborate travel to exotic places — to Italy, to Australia, and maybe some day to Mars. But maybe sometimes awe and wonder aren’t things we need to seek, but rather simply to recognize.
It's a joy to travel with you vicariously. One day that tween may surprise you with a precious remembrance that has nothing to do video games!