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| How My Dad Became the Traveler I Once Was | How My Dad Became the Traveler I Once Was |
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| My dad was 51 years old the first time he traveled abroad. He came to visit me in Southern France, on my first trip overseas, at age 20. I was spending a year in Aix-en-Provence, and my dad and stepmom and little brother gamely traipsed around fields of lavender, knocking their heads on the entrances to Lilliputian restaurants and politely not making snide remarks about my new penchant for wearing skirts over jeans. | My dad was 51 years old the first time he traveled abroad. He came to visit me in Southern France, on my first trip overseas, at age 20. I was spending a year in Aix-en-Provence, and my dad and stepmom and little brother gamely traipsed around fields of lavender, knocking their heads on the entrances to Lilliputian restaurants and politely not making snide remarks about my new penchant for wearing skirts over jeans. |
| Then, I was the adventurer, showing them how travel had opened up my life. Now, at age 37, I am the parent, mostly tied to home. And in recent years my dad, at age 67, has unexpectedly become the traveler. He has been temporarily halted by the coronavirus outbreak, but already I am wistful for the time he can move freely through the world again. | Then, I was the adventurer, showing them how travel had opened up my life. Now, at age 37, I am the parent, mostly tied to home. And in recent years my dad, at age 67, has unexpectedly become the traveler. He has been temporarily halted by the coronavirus outbreak, but already I am wistful for the time he can move freely through the world again. |
| My dad didn’t travel much when he was growing up. My grandfather died when my dad was 2 years old, and my grandmother worked full time and raised my dad and his brother as a single mother. As a young adult hoisting himself into the middle class, there was no time or money for travel. He worked nights at Kroger’s in Cincinnati, putting himself and my mother through school while his first child, my older sister, was little. When he and my mother divorced and he remarried, my older sister went with my mom while I moved with my newly composed family unit — my dad, stepmom and just-born baby brother — first to a farm in Indiana, then to Columbus, Ohio, where my dad settled into a job as a scientist at a research institute. For vacations our family went to Michigan, the Great Smoky Mountains, or Ohio’s state parks. | My dad didn’t travel much when he was growing up. My grandfather died when my dad was 2 years old, and my grandmother worked full time and raised my dad and his brother as a single mother. As a young adult hoisting himself into the middle class, there was no time or money for travel. He worked nights at Kroger’s in Cincinnati, putting himself and my mother through school while his first child, my older sister, was little. When he and my mother divorced and he remarried, my older sister went with my mom while I moved with my newly composed family unit — my dad, stepmom and just-born baby brother — first to a farm in Indiana, then to Columbus, Ohio, where my dad settled into a job as a scientist at a research institute. For vacations our family went to Michigan, the Great Smoky Mountains, or Ohio’s state parks. |
| Growing up in Columbus, I fantasized daily about getting out. Not because I wasn’t happy, but because I was insatiably curious and Ohio was — teenage sigh of disgust — so boring. I took the stability my dad had constructed for me and used it to leap: first, a puddle jump across the Midwest, to the University of Wisconsin, then a plunge southward to Lima, Peru. I saved up during my senior year of college for a bare-bones trip across South America, where I spent endless hours on second-class buses and climbed mountains and hitchhiked and did the kinds of incredibly reckless and carefree things I hope and pray my own daughter will never undertake or tell me about. From South America, I moved to Reunion Island to teach English, and from there to Oaxaca, Mexico, and from there to Beijing, and then to Nagoya, Japan. Through it all, my dad biked to work, biked home, sent me letters, listened to my exuberant long-winded dispatches, fielded my sobbing phone calls. | Growing up in Columbus, I fantasized daily about getting out. Not because I wasn’t happy, but because I was insatiably curious and Ohio was — teenage sigh of disgust — so boring. I took the stability my dad had constructed for me and used it to leap: first, a puddle jump across the Midwest, to the University of Wisconsin, then a plunge southward to Lima, Peru. I saved up during my senior year of college for a bare-bones trip across South America, where I spent endless hours on second-class buses and climbed mountains and hitchhiked and did the kinds of incredibly reckless and carefree things I hope and pray my own daughter will never undertake or tell me about. From South America, I moved to Reunion Island to teach English, and from there to Oaxaca, Mexico, and from there to Beijing, and then to Nagoya, Japan. Through it all, my dad biked to work, biked home, sent me letters, listened to my exuberant long-winded dispatches, fielded my sobbing phone calls. |
| In 2014, my daughter was born, and in 2016, my husband and I moved back from Mexico to Pittsburgh, where we have settled — sometimes reluctantly, sometimes uncertainly, sometimes happily. Abruptly, my travel days were curtailed. We go as frequently as we can to Oaxaca, where my husband’s family lives, and take road trips to visit national parks and out-of-state friends. But for the most part we are on our front porch drawing, or hiking in the local park, or at the bagel shop around the corner. | In 2014, my daughter was born, and in 2016, my husband and I moved back from Mexico to Pittsburgh, where we have settled — sometimes reluctantly, sometimes uncertainly, sometimes happily. Abruptly, my travel days were curtailed. We go as frequently as we can to Oaxaca, where my husband’s family lives, and take road trips to visit national parks and out-of-state friends. But for the most part we are on our front porch drawing, or hiking in the local park, or at the bagel shop around the corner. |
| Meanwhile, my dad had suddenly taken flight. Last October, at age 67, he and my husband, Jorge, traveled together to Oaxaca while my 5-year-old daughter and I stayed behind. She had school; I had work. One day in the middle of their two-week trip, my husband texted me a photo of my dad. He was in one of his long-sleeved, butter-yellow hiking shirts and a white Tilley hat, leaning forward on one leg into a massive field of marigolds, waving a hand. He and Jorge were out roaming between villages during Day of the Dead, and Jorge had driven our rusty 1996 Range Rover down all manner of rutted, goat-crowded roads to get to this field. My dad looked thrilled. It was adorable. It was also strange and a little heartbreaking. | Meanwhile, my dad had suddenly taken flight. Last October, at age 67, he and my husband, Jorge, traveled together to Oaxaca while my 5-year-old daughter and I stayed behind. She had school; I had work. One day in the middle of their two-week trip, my husband texted me a photo of my dad. He was in one of his long-sleeved, butter-yellow hiking shirts and a white Tilley hat, leaning forward on one leg into a massive field of marigolds, waving a hand. He and Jorge were out roaming between villages during Day of the Dead, and Jorge had driven our rusty 1996 Range Rover down all manner of rutted, goat-crowded roads to get to this field. My dad looked thrilled. It was adorable. It was also strange and a little heartbreaking. |
| Ten years ago, that would’ve been me. I would’ve sent an email to my dad with a photo of myself atop an Andean mountain, or smiling with Jorge over cafe de olla at a desolate truck stop on the highway to Mexico City. Now, I receive these texts as I simmer rice on the stove, wash my daughter’s hair, fold socks. | Ten years ago, that would’ve been me. I would’ve sent an email to my dad with a photo of myself atop an Andean mountain, or smiling with Jorge over cafe de olla at a desolate truck stop on the highway to Mexico City. Now, I receive these texts as I simmer rice on the stove, wash my daughter’s hair, fold socks. |
| I have come to inhabit the life my dad lived for 40 years: working, raising children, taking care of a house, trying to carve out little moments of grace in the everyday. Like him, I rise early and read poetry. Like him, I take our daughter on long weekend hikes. Like him, I duct-tape whatever and whenever possible, and drive my husband nuts by insisting that our 1974 Kelty tent is in perfectly good condition and why on earth spend $200 on a new tent? Unlike him, I work full-time on my writing, a precarious luxury he never had. In order to do so, and to be a mother as well, I’ve had to cut back on my travel. | I have come to inhabit the life my dad lived for 40 years: working, raising children, taking care of a house, trying to carve out little moments of grace in the everyday. Like him, I rise early and read poetry. Like him, I take our daughter on long weekend hikes. Like him, I duct-tape whatever and whenever possible, and drive my husband nuts by insisting that our 1974 Kelty tent is in perfectly good condition and why on earth spend $200 on a new tent? Unlike him, I work full-time on my writing, a precarious luxury he never had. In order to do so, and to be a mother as well, I’ve had to cut back on my travel. |
| This is a natural transition, more so than I’d like to admit: I am ultimately a cliché, the wild child in her 20s and the settled mom and career woman in her 30s. I am not as exceptional as I once believed. I am much more like my father than I imagined: I’ve always known we were kindred spirits in terms of worldview and political leaning and literary taste, but now I see how much my daily life aligns with his. How much I have fallen into step with who he was in the middle of his life. | This is a natural transition, more so than I’d like to admit: I am ultimately a cliché, the wild child in her 20s and the settled mom and career woman in her 30s. I am not as exceptional as I once believed. I am much more like my father than I imagined: I’ve always known we were kindred spirits in terms of worldview and political leaning and literary taste, but now I see how much my daily life aligns with his. How much I have fallen into step with who he was in the middle of his life. |
| Meanwhile, he has become more of who I was in my 20s, as I discovered myself. He decides to go to Cuba to practice his Spanish. He spends weeks in Mexico with Jorge, and not in tourist Mexico — they visit my husband’s family deep in the mountains, they travel to carnivals in far-flung villages and drink the local mezcal, they stay out into early morning at the cantina with our big group of friends. My dad has learned Spanish and sometimes treks alone to outlying villages, chatting with people, coming back with stories. Last October, he and Jorge headed into a remote Oaxacan canyon to try to spot green macaws. | Meanwhile, he has become more of who I was in my 20s, as I discovered myself. He decides to go to Cuba to practice his Spanish. He spends weeks in Mexico with Jorge, and not in tourist Mexico — they visit my husband’s family deep in the mountains, they travel to carnivals in far-flung villages and drink the local mezcal, they stay out into early morning at the cantina with our big group of friends. My dad has learned Spanish and sometimes treks alone to outlying villages, chatting with people, coming back with stories. Last October, he and Jorge headed into a remote Oaxacan canyon to try to spot green macaws. |
| Updated July 22, 2020 | |
| “I can take care of myself!” my dad announced to me on the phone, feeling guilty about perhaps infringing on Jorge’s precious Mexico time. “I know, Dad,” I said, sounding just like a parent. It strikes me that my dad and I are cycling around one another, that our lives are less the singular, linear trajectories I’ve always assumed, with his as a parent giving way to mine as a child, and more a loop in which parent becomes child and child becomes parent over and over, like the sun and the moon in revolutions and stages, rising and setting in each other’s light. | “I can take care of myself!” my dad announced to me on the phone, feeling guilty about perhaps infringing on Jorge’s precious Mexico time. “I know, Dad,” I said, sounding just like a parent. It strikes me that my dad and I are cycling around one another, that our lives are less the singular, linear trajectories I’ve always assumed, with his as a parent giving way to mine as a child, and more a loop in which parent becomes child and child becomes parent over and over, like the sun and the moon in revolutions and stages, rising and setting in each other’s light. |
| Of course my dad delights in those rutted roads, in the coarse lip of a hand-hewn gourd and the singe of mezcal in the throat, in the mornings when the Mexican mountains are blue and blue and blue and the heart seems to bottom out into something so much larger than itself. He’s my dad. Of course I take my daughter to the meadow after school, saying, look, milkweed, look, thistle, and wow what a big and beautiful oak. | Of course my dad delights in those rutted roads, in the coarse lip of a hand-hewn gourd and the singe of mezcal in the throat, in the mornings when the Mexican mountains are blue and blue and blue and the heart seems to bottom out into something so much larger than itself. He’s my dad. Of course I take my daughter to the meadow after school, saying, look, milkweed, look, thistle, and wow what a big and beautiful oak. |
| I am not so much myself as I thought I was. Neither, perhaps, is he. We both live each other’s lives, parent, child. Here, an afternoon crunching in new snow through Midwestern woods; there, a raucous parade of men dressed as devils and in the middle of them all my dad, grinning, with my face and my freckles, waving from afar. | I am not so much myself as I thought I was. Neither, perhaps, is he. We both live each other’s lives, parent, child. Here, an afternoon crunching in new snow through Midwestern woods; there, a raucous parade of men dressed as devils and in the middle of them all my dad, grinning, with my face and my freckles, waving from afar. |
| Sarah Menkedick is the author of “Ordinary Insanity: Fear and the Silent Crisis of Motherhood in America.” | Sarah Menkedick is the author of “Ordinary Insanity: Fear and the Silent Crisis of Motherhood in America.” |