what is a holiday, anyway

scribbles from an airplane

Dear Z,

It’s Christmas Eve and I am on a plane flying back to see you. Your mama and I have been away for ten days, which feels like a long time to not be with you. You’ve been hanging with your Oma Blue and Opa Chris in Portland, going to the Japanese Garden and playing in the rain and who knows what else. When we’ve facetime’d the two or three times that we have, I can see you having grown in ways that are harder to see when I’m there every day.

On the video call I can hear that your language is more articulate, your grammar is more complete, your footwork when you run across the house when Opa calls TORO! TORO! And your fingers held next to your temples like bullhorns and you run toward the blanket he’s holding up then tumble, giggling, into the couch cushions.

In those moments, I can see your footwork getting more technical, your balance developing. You’re more grounded, aware, sleeping twelve hours a night. But we’re getting home late tonight, long after you’ll have gone to bed. I have a sense that tomorrow may not be a sleep-in day for you. That you’ll be jumping on my bed by six am, before the sun comes up, and I’ll be ecstatic to see you again.

Are you going to live there forever? You asked when we showed you the place we stayed in Todos Santos, Baja California Sur.

No, son, we are absolutely not going to live there forever. And though it’s hard to explain to you now, at nearly four years old, how taking this break was meant to nourish us into the foreseeable future*, I hope that we’ll all travel together someday, to go on adventures to visit wild horses and climb rocks and mountains and explore jungles and abandoned buildings and eat different types of food and learn to communicate in different languages.

Traveling is just like being a kid: playing and making friends in new places, eating new and interesting foods, going through some hard moments, and learning important things like what we’re made of, just how much we don’t know, and patience.

There is something really special about traveling, something about meeting people who see, think, and feel the world differently, and who go about things like work and love and play and art and dance in different ways. People who live in the hilltops, in the jungles, in big cities, in small hamlets near the sea -

there is so much to learn about this world, Z-bird.

So many birds to watch, aurora borealis to marvel at, fish to see while snorkeling in Baja or commercial fishing in Alaska or watching the whales breach or swimming with sea lions and seeing the shimmering rainbows of life swimming through coral, luminescent crabs scaling the rock walls in natural archways that reach like elephant tusks into the sea. I hope you get to explore caves, drive tractors, and immerse yourself in the wild places, which are so important for the health of our planet.

If you want, of course. If you can. I don’t know what you’ll choose to do with your life, and I don’t know what will be available to you. But I want you to know that I’m here for you no matter what you choose.

I love to travel because of the pickles and opportunities. The small moments of discomfort when I need something and don’t know the words to ask for it when someone doens’t know my language. Or just a few hours ago, when mama recognized someone on our plane who was on TV shows when we were kids. Mario Lopez played on a show called Saved by the Bell. Which was one of my favorite shows in the early 90s.

He’s an adult now, with three kids and their mama, traveling from Mexico. We had an opportunity to say hello and mama asked for his autograph. It’s a rare experience, perhaps because we don’t live in Los Angeles, where many people who’ve been on shows and movies live.

We’re landing soon. See you mañana, mijo.

* definition of holiday