Trust Me [#44]

Well — it’s definitely been a minute, hasn’t it?

I know I should back up to where we left off in Ireland in March. I should tell our stories about hiking in the French Alps with Maisie, Bear’s sister from another mister. I should write about falling in love with the land of thistles and unicorns (even though I tried so so hard not to), or about the wow-factor of Athens and the please-don’t-make-me-leave effect of Santorini.

I should deep dive into how I felt watching Wyatt disappear out of sight at 5:00 a.m. at the airport in Amsterdam as he set off with a one-way-ticket back to the States and a mission to live out the summer of his dreams on his own terms.

“Trust me, Mom. I’m gonna be fine,” he said with a practiced eyeroll and a patronizing head nod.

And, I should write about how it feels now that he’s gone — a strange cocktail of pride, relief, gratitude, longing, and absolute panic; a steady IV drip of all the feels, all the time.

I should find words to describe the enchantment that became of an unexpected week of mother/son travel with only Hudson. I should write about how he chose Berlin and Rome as our destinations.

“Trust me, Molly. That’s where I want to go,” he assured me.

(Yes, Hudson now calls me Molly. Don’t get me started. I can’t even.)

I should craft some delicate paragraph that might allow me to share with you the awe of standing beside him while staring up at Michelangelo’s masterpiece in the Sistine Chapel, or of walking together through the Colosseum in the footsteps of Roman gladiators, or of pacing beside remnants of the Berlin Wall and through the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, trying to wrap our brains around their histories. Or I should write about the simple joy that was sharing idle chitchat over dinner near the Spanish Steps in a scene plucked straight from a painting.

I definitely should. And I probably could. But I don’t want to.

Oddly, this time I don’t have a clear sense of why. Usually, I’ll be the first to admit that laziness is the obvious culprit stepping on my toes when I’m blissfully box-stepping to No Thanks, Rather Not, but I don’t get the sense that’s the case this time (at least, not entirely anyway).

Chapter Two began in a blaze of transatlantic flights and new adventures, new countries, new plans. I assured friends and family I’d keep writing the words and sharing the stories. By the time mid-March rolled around, I’d shared exactly one.

It feels like a lifetime has happened in the four months since then, but I can’t bring myself to want to write coherently about any of it. (I can’t even bring myself to post on Instagram about most of it.)

(More on all that in a sec.) 

We knew this shooting star we were riding across the sky would disappear sometime before the end of summer. When we landed at Heathrow in January, we knew we had six months of burn time left, at most. Six month with Wyatt in our clutches. Six months to explore Europe as a family of four. Six months left to figure out where we’d attempt to call home for two years so Hudson could — at his own insistence — finish high school in a “real” school.

"Trust me, Molly. It’s all gonna work out,” swore John whenever I started to panic that time was running out.

Well, friends — while I was busy panicking and not-writing, our great ball of sky-fire was steadily chewing up the atmosphere.

Before Wyatt’s Mutiny in May, we crushed a good chunk of the UK together and crossed off a handful of Western European highlights. But it’s August now and Wyatt’s already been a long time gone, busy working full-time and being 18 in Park City — road tripping to SoCal with friends and couch-surfing his way through the homes, hearts, and dinner tables of his/our obscenely generous friends.

“Trust us, Molly. We’ll take good care of him,” they promised. (Though I had no doubts.)

The remaining three-quarters of our crew managed to luck into a month housesitting in Devon, England, and somehow scored a visit from Carson and Jamie, two highlights of Boat Life in Mexico.

We did England’s West Country proud, right before our cosmic ride got sidetracked by a unicorn and burned out over a field of thistles in Scotland.

Remember when I said, “More on that in a sec”? Here we go.

The amount of unwritten words and never-posted photos recapping our past four months makes me blurry-eyed. As I sit here wondering, “why, if not for laziness, am I so averse to writing them,” I’ve come to wonder if it isn’t because writing that part of the story effectively ends that part of the story. Giving it a beginning and a middle invariably necessitates writing an ending. To organize our recent events into paragraphs of memories is to tell a story about things that once happened but are now finished happening because new things are about to happen.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all-in on the things-that-once-happened and the new-things-are-about-to-happen parts. But I’m having a wee hiccup getting past the part about things-that-are-finished-happening.

Because I’m not finished with those things.

I’m not finished with the part where we travel together as a family of four, arguing about beds and bathrooms and what to have to dinner. I’m not finished with the part where I never have to shop alone because Wyatt is always game to come along. And, even though I thought I was, I’m actually not finished with the part where the dull roar of Wyatt and Hudson’s constant bickering permeates the otherwise pleasant soundscape of my existence.

As maddening as the presence of that incessant growling is in realtime, I’m finding its absence even more disturbing.   

So instead of adding pages of tales of The End of the Wyatt Era, I’m leaving that space mostly blank. (Not to take credit for a Mensa-level revelation here, but I don’t have to turn the page if there isn’t a page to turn.) Hopefully, this slightly awkward but intentional whitespace will serve as a blatant and open invitation for the part about The Good Ol’ Days to pick up right where it left off any time it chooses. The promising news is that for the first time in over three years, we’re pretty easy to find should that part ever come looking for us. (Hint hint, Wyatt).

On that note…

Above an art gallery, next door to a pub, across the street from a sushi joint, and smack dab in the middle of Edinburgh, Scotland, is the perfectly wonderful flat we now call home.

Hudson attends a public school a half-mile walk away. He wears a requisite uniform that is not an Adidas track suit but rather a shiny blue tie over a white collared shirt and black slacks.

I invite those of you who know Hudson to take all the time you need with this.

For the first time in over three years, we have a mailing address that is the same as where we actually live. We have a gym membership, Hudson has an Australian barber named Ryan a few blocks down the hill, our clothes are on hangers in closets bigger than a dorm fridge, and our daily routines as closely resemble “normal” as you might now fear they do.

And. I. Love it. Like, I love love it.

This admission is only slightly embarrassing for me — someone who can’t usually fathom: 

1) how traveling the world full-time and living in constant motion isn’t everyone’s idea of a perfect life, and 

2) why anyone would choose to live in a cold damp climate like Scotland when places like — oh, I don’t know — SANDY BEACHES WITH SUNSHINE exist.

Before our first visit to Scotland back in March, I was very much prepared to loathe everything about it (based entirely on my understanding of its unapologetically quitter attitude toward hosting warm sunny days (or really even about hosting the sun at all)). True to what I’ve come to embrace as Scottish form, Scotland was unfazed by my apparently-misguided standoffishness.

After a 12-night roadtrip loop around the country followed by a week-long housesit in Edinburgh, I was a convert.

Considering I still wear a North Face puffy coat most days (in late-summer, mind you), this particular reformation seems near biblical.

One of the things I love about travel is its ability to turn my world upside down — floor me with ohmygod moments. Travel makes me a fearless optimist, a dreamer. It makes me curious, interested, engaged.

Travel gives me the confidence to think I know all the answers, then chucks my ego off the nearest cliff and tells me to rethink my questions.

Over and over again.

To count number of times over the decades that travel has taken my breath away and left me wide-eyed and bewildered would be impossible.

I shouldn’t be surprised anymore by how often I’m surprised. The more I travel, the more it happens. Still, if you’d have asked me in February what I thought my odds of living in Scotland were (let alone loving Scotland), I’d have assured you that the odds of me winning a Grammy would be better.

I for sure could’ve been on board with a Grammy win for Best New Non-Singer/Songwriter, but Scotland had other plans.

Scotland had the Isle of Skye and Oban and Lochness and highland cows. Scotland had Harry Potter vibes and miles of accessible public trails and over 17 hours of sun daylight in June. Scotland had friendly people and 22 million pubs and a three-bedroom flat in Edinburgh that is positioned within a six-minute walk from an actual castle on a hill and as close to a TK Maxx as I should ever be allowed to live.

(Uh-huh — TK is TJ’s identical European twin. Be still my heart. And wallet.)  

There’s definitely an element of sorcery at play in this country.

I don’t know how else to explain the fact that a (relatively) cold, usually-forecast-to-be-raining city with the worst margaritas infiltrated my flip-flop-and-tank-top-wearing tequila-loving soul. That said, my first clue might have been upon discovering that Scotland’s national flower is the Scottish thistle. That’s right — a thistle. Literally a regulated noxious weed, spiky as all get out, that can grow over eight feet tall and four feet wide.

I know. It’s a lot. But hold up just a sec, because Scotland is the gift that keeps on giving. 

There’s more. 

The Scots’ have chosen the unicorn as their national animal. I kid you not — unicorns, with their rainbow farts that smell like candy and all. (Presumably.)

Now I’m not here to throw stones. Quite the opposite in fact.

I’m as big a fan of roses and bald eagles as the next American, but if thistles and unicorns are ever on the ballot, I’ll be the first to fill in those checkboxes with glitter ink hearts and cast my vote of enthusiastic support.

My point — any population who proudly embraces giant, spiky, purple-headed weeds and unicorns as symbolic of who they were, who they are, and who they strive to be, is a population I’d like to spend some quality time getting to know.

Two years is ticking on this particular get-to-know-you timer. Two years to casually replace “hi” with “hiya,” “thanks” with “cheers,” and “little” with “wee.”

(That last one is my top priority. Obviously.) 

Two years to reacquaint our wee toes with rain boots and our now tan-less arms with shirtsleeves. Two years of pub crawls from our front door and £100 flights to Morocco for three-day weekends (I hope). Two years to get used to being three instead of four.

Two years before we are two instead of three and I have to remember to leave more whitespace in the story for Hudson.

I think we’ve got this.

I mean, living in a land symbolically represented by a tower-sized flowering weed and a uni-horned horse, it seems safe to assume some inherent ferocity of spirit at least partly defines its people.

We want in on that action.

Over our next 24 months as honorary Scots, I’m prepared for the nature of travel to keep slapping me upside the head with OMG. I’m ready to let everything I think I know about everything continue to be flipped inside out and I’m ready to be just a bit less surprised each time. (Please don’t tell the Scots I just referred to ourselves as Honorary Scots.)

We’re ready to show Wyatt the Hard Rock Cafe around the corner and the Louis Vuitton store at the other end of our cobblestoned alley (named Thistle Street).

And, we’re ready to share this Scottish sorcery with friends and family.

(Speaking of whom — to any of you blogcore legends out there, still inexplicably committed to making it past the final words of my losing battles against brevity — pack a raincoat and come say hi!)

Not unlike the spiny stalk of an eight-foot-tall thistle or the spiral of gold on a unicorn’s horn, the magic here can seem tough to put a finger on. But the thing about thistles and unicorns is that they’re more than willing to help you try.

If you haven’t recently, I hope you have a chance to find your own OMG, or come share some of ours. I speak from personal experience when I assure you —

good things happen the moment you’re willing to grab a bouquet of violet spikes and slide headfirst down the rainbow of a unicorn-fart that smells a wee bit like Skittles.

Trust me.