Since May, I’ve spent more time away from my kids than any other period since they were born. I was en route to Mexico City the first weekend of June, while Ada was in the ER getting her arms cast after a rollerskating fall. Jacob gave me the approximation of play-by-plays as she got X-rays, went to the pediatric orthopedist, was attended to by multiple male nurses casting her arms, then afterwards, as she settled into her double casts and slings. I felt I was missing something momentous, wracked by equal parts guilt and curiosity, but my not being there was also a relief.
I’ve been to Toronto three times for work, for three separate weeks, staying in three separate hotels in May, July, September. Ada spent three nearly contact-less weeks at sleep-away camp in New Jersey during none of the weeks I was also in Toronto. Julian spent a week upstate with my parents without us and another week in Florida with Jacob. Jacob, separate from all *my* travel, has also made trips to Michigan, DC, Aspen, North Dakota, and Bangalore since the spring.
By existing in many permutations of a family unit, I think about how the kids increasingly have chapters I have no awareness of. I rely on what they convey, but they convey very little by way of coherent narrative, and it is customary in our house to make very little contact when one parent is away. Maybe we’ll do one FaceTime, a voice note, a call if there’s a special occasion, or a full moon worth trying to show the other through the screen. This is both for the people at home and the parent away; each has their rhythm, their dynamics, their power structures, their carefully calibrated cadence, easily disrupted by breaking the cocoon of the present.
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Jacob told me once, while I was on a trip, about the kids walking home from afterschool together, and Julian being emotionally dismantled by seeing a dead bird. I don’t know what kind of bird, the cause of death, or at which intersection, exactly, he saw it. But, I could imagine him being distraught, crumbling to the ground, squatting behind a tree, Ada reckoning with his emotions in the absence of a parent, righting his body, coaxing him home, wondering if she should call for help.
I thought immediately about The Dead Bird, the children’s book by Margaret Wise Brown, where a group of kids in a park discover a dead bird. They mourn it, sing a song for it, and decorate it with ferns, assigning great meaning to this experience in a way that an adult likely would not, if in its presence.
None of Julian’s dead bird event was conveyed to me from either child, only from Jacob, despite seeming significant, and I think of all the events that happen in my absence that never make it into words.
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Last weekend, Jacob and I made our first and only trip together (minus kids) in eight years, to Santa Fe, an overdue version of travel that asked for acceptance of flow. We had flights, a car rental, and a place to stay. I haphazardly made a few restaurant reservations. On the way there, I took recommendations from readers and friends and threw them on a google map. By the time we arrived we had a scaffold of a plan, which felt like just the right amount of plan to have.
On our second morning we did a hike to a site called Plaza Blanca, on grounds owned by a local mosque. It’s just a few miles from Georgia O’Keeffe’s studio and house in Abiquiu, a rise of otherworldly light sand in majestic formations that rise from seemingly nowhere. The grounds require a punch code on an iron gate, which we got from a friend.
The gate creaked open, the right side faster than the left, and we drove up to the parking area, with only one other car. Chamisa, the common name for the “rubber rabbitbrush” bloom in explosive yellows in every direction and there’s a type of branching cactus, we later learned is called the cholla cactus, fruiting and sprawling on the path.
Jacob and I took pictures, two people intent on capturing the majesty, while trying not to let our attempts at posterity interfere with the experience itself. We walked up close to the formations to put our hands to the brittle layers to see if they were as fragile as they looked from afar.
A group of six or so visitors to the mosque, the only others we saw that morning, were walking around the unmarked paths, and asked if we’d take a group picture. They handed me an iPhone and Jacob stood off to the side. They motioned for him to get into the group photo. He hesitated, not wanting to interfere, but they were insistent, so he jumped in on the end of the line.
I snapped a few photos in both orientations, then motioned for him to exit the group, imagining later on when they’d look at the photo roll and “random white guy” would be there tacked onto the end. We laughed about it afterwards, then kept exploring the Mars-like surface, weaving apart and together over the rocks, the landscape visceral, a bit transcendent.
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On Sunday, the last evening at our hotel, we sat by the pool and called the kids. We were excited to tell them about the formations, the plants, the hike, how it was like being in space.
My dad answered, then quickly passed the phone to Ada, who was in the middle of losing a tooth. She had a tissue up to her mouth, also on the phone, and was bleeding and grabbing her mouth. “My toof,” she said a few times, before passing the phone to Julian, who spouted off some facts about swords and Adventure Time and the latest manga book he was reading in a type of incoherent stream of consciousness, before handing the phone back to my dad, who quickly told us to have a good flight home and then hung up.
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When we got home, just after midnight on Monday, the kids were asleep but Ada left us an assortment of welcome home gifts on our bed: four Peanuts pins, a random piece of red cloth, a bag of her favourite gummy worms, a giant tennis ball, and a 2026 Monet calendar that she’d obviously begged my parents to get us.
She’d written a card for our arrival:
Dear Mama & Papa,
I really hope you had fun on your trip and I’m excited to hear all about it but for now enjoy yourself and relax. I love you lots.
xoxo Ada
I asked her the next morning about the last few days, knowing she’d been to see the debut movie experience of The Life of the Showgirl, to a sleepover, been with her grandparents, and otherwise, been living.
“It was good,” she says. “You know, normal.”
She doesn’t ask about our trip. I don’t dig for details about her days either. They’ll come out, I trust, in time.
Or, they won’t, and we’ll each have had our experiences, more and more separate, and then the ones back together.
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Recommendations:
To listen: Recent feelings about Ezra Klein aside, really enjoyed Klein in conversation with Brian Eno. We listened to this on the drive to the airport and Eno’s got the quality of someone who is extremely choice about his words, has deeply considered perspectives, and is also just open and curious. Beautiful.
Just read: so many great things by Lily King
Heart the Lover, her newest, which is everyone’s book club pick including mine, and she writes relationship tension so beautifully. A fast, tender, heart-wrenching read.
Writers & Lovers, her 2020 novel, to which I’ll give no spoilers, but read in tandem with Heart the Lover; you choose the order.
Euphoria, her 2014 bestseller about the love triangle between three anthropologists, inspired by the life of Margaret Mead.
Also finished: I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman, a Belgian writer who first published this book in the 90s, and since its 2022 re-publication by Transit Books, it has taken on a new life. Dystopian, philosophical, impeccable craft.
To play around with: Generativ Design, a website that lets you play around with all kinds of fun, graphical generative art. The very best version of playful internet that reminds me of another time.
Hydration: The Miir Wide Mouth is my new favorite water bottle if you prefer no straws. 20 oz, easy to clean, great shape, sleek enough for all those side pockets.
Recs, please:
My parents brought over an enormous volume of apples, and I’m looking for new recipes.
Would you want a recommendation guide for Santa Fe?
I take a Leap Year trip with my best friend from high school, and I am campaigning for Santa Fe to be our next location! A guide would be great!
Smitten Kitchen’s Apple Cake is a huge hit in my family. I also like it for breakfast when given the opportunity: https://smittenkitchen.com/2008/09/moms-apple-cake/