Do you remember those last unbeknownst days before the pandemic upended your world? The before-life, the before-you? Do you remember where you were, on a precipice you didn’t know was the edge of anything?
I was on Maui. Building sandcastles with my 2-year-old daughter. Savoring sunsets with my husband. Taking unhurried runs along the ocean. I turned 36 on that trip and decided with Rob after months of uncertainty that we wanted to try for another baby. And while we sipped gin and tonics on the lanai after Juniper went to bed and listened to the breeze bend the palms, while Rob followed the news and stockpiled dog food and toilet paper from Amazon, I was reading my novel and trying to cling to my denial.
We flew home to Portland on March 1st, and as life unraveled, I could never shake this feeling that we passed through some portal that day, like if we could just get back, everything would reset. We would wake up from the nightmare. Like the kids from Stranger Things looking for the gateway out of the Upside Down. Or the stranded survivors from Lost trying to get off the island. If we could just return to the place where we spent our last normal days—where we were last normal—maybe everything would be okay.
I’m not even sure what I meant by okay as I entertained this comforting fairytale throughout the pandemic. Obviously, nothing can rewind the last three years, erase all the fear and heartache and loss. But maybe it wasn’t just magical thinking. Because if we ever made it back, it would mean we’d made it through, that life had resumed enough to get on an airplane, to seek some pleasure and not just survival.
There’s something more though. The fairytale wasn’t just about a return to travel, but to a specific place. Part of the romance of places we’ve been, I think, is that they hold versions of the people we’ve been. They are placeholders. There’s an allure to past selves, to returning to a place I inhabited as one of them. In this case, someone who had no idea what was coming.
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Three years later, that idea of a second baby is a blonde little boy snuggled in my lap with an ear infection and a fever that spiked on the flight. As I hug Dez’s hot toddler body closer through a turbulent descent, my oval window fills with endless turquoise and then Maui’s lush hillsides. I feel a release. The satisfaction of a story come full-circle.
We decided to explore a new part of the island this time, so instead of south to Kihei, we head northwest toward Napili Bay in our maroon minivan. Bare feet on the dash, an arm out my window, I glance over at Rob in the driver’s seat. He flashes a triumphant grin. We did it, we made it back.
Places have this tricky way of looming large and flawless in our memories, especially if you’ve been waiting three years to get back to that place so it can somehow prove your okay-ness. When we get to our condo, I immediately begin comparing it to where we stayed before. Silly, trivial things, like how would we bathe our son without a bathtub? Where would I run? Last time I had an uninterrupted route along the water, but here it appears I’ll have to run past strip malls on the main drag. And where is the shave ice place right across the street for Juniper? We do have a little beach right out front, but the tide, when we arrive, is too high to leave enough sand for the kids to play safely.
The next morning, both kids wake up a full hour before dawn. It’s raining. And because of his antibiotics, Dez has terrible diarrhea (sorry but this is nonfiction!) that results in frequent diaper changes, new outfits and laundry. I am tired and, despite my best efforts, grumpy. This does not feel like our last Maui vacation, preserved in the perfection of my pre-pandemic memory. I’m ashamed to admit all this pouting in paradise, but I think it stems from that mythology I constructed about the necessity of returning, and apparently that meant to the exact place.
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Humpback whales travel approximately 3,000 miles from Alaska to Hawaii every year, one of the longest migrations of the animal kingdom. A truly epic journey. Their time in Hawaiian waters is spent mating, birthing and nurturing their newborn calves. Humpbacks have an 11- to 12-month gestational period, which means their babies are conceived and born in the same place—and the pregnant mothers make a 6,000-mile round trip journey between the two events.
Our kids continue to rise before the sun, so when it’s Rob’s turn to sleep in, I sip my Earl Grey and wait for the sky to lighten. Then I set Dez up in his highchair with Cheerios and banana pieces, Juniper next to me with her book and yogurt. We watch the humpbacks breach from our lanai, propelling their majestic school bus-sized bodies fully out of the water, suspending momentarily midair, and then crashing back below the surface.
Three years ago, I obsessively scanned the water for whales. We saw lots of spouts, a few tails, but never a breach. This time I’ve already lost count, but every whale-sighting gives me the same jolt of delight, the same involuntary awe-gasp. They emerge without warning, and if you look away for a moment, you can miss the whole thing.
“Look June, there!” I point. “Keep watching!” But she is weary of my exclamations. “Mo-om,” she groans like a 5-year-old teenager, “can you just keep reading to me?” Dez humors me though, quickly learning the word whale and singing out “WAY-yell! WAY-yell!”
For each one I see, I think how many more must be just below the surface. How we can’t always see the epic journeys of everyone around us, but we’ve each made our own over the last three years. I didn’t swim 3,000 miles, but Rob and I drove that far across the country with Juniper to be with my mother-in-law during the last months of her life. I got pregnant. We drove 3,000 miles back home. Rob lost his mother. We welcomed our son. It was brutal and beautiful. Most epic journeys are, I think.
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That beach I complained about, the one just steps from our condo? It turns out to be lovely, and frequented by sunbathing sea turtles. The tub problem? Turns out Dez is delighted by showers. And that first morning when everyone woke up so early? Rob, bless him, packed the kids into the minivan for a sunrise explore so I could go back to sleep. My internal clock was off too, so I went on a misty run and discovered a beachfront boardwalk that started a half-mile down the road. And instead of shave ice, a smoothie place just across the street.
All week, again and again, I relearn my whale-watching lesson: If I look away for a moment, I might miss the whole thing.
One day it starts raining right when we get to the beach and unload all the towels and sand toys and snacks, but then I am bobbing and laughing in the ocean with my daughter under a rainbow, warm raindrops swallowed by the waves.
One afternoon our son has a diarrhea blowout (nonfiction!) at the gelato shop and has already used his backup clothes, but then he is dancing in nothing but his diaper to that ‘80s song “Gloria (Gloria), I think they got your number (Gloria)” and Rob snaps a photo of him by a No Shirt, No Entry sign.
And one morning I am sitting on the floor breastfeeding with a huge knot in my shoulder because everyone is still waking up at 5:30 a.m., but then I turn my head toward the window just in time to catch the most incredible whale breach of the entire trip. Nobody sees it but me.
For the wanderer, there’s a constant suspicion that the wonder is elsewhere. For the parent of young children, the notion that you’ll regain the capacity for wonder when the kids are older, when you can look up from the diapers and runny noses and messes. And then there’s me and my own fairytale, about needing to get back to a particular place and version of myself.
The wonder, it always turns out, is right where I am.
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When we moved from San Diego to Portland 10 years ago, Rob and I started this tradition of escaping winter for somewhere warm in February, kind of like the humpbacks. Luckily for me, that also usually means I’m somewhere warm on my birthday. This year, for my 39th, Rob makes a dinner reservation at the resort restaurant where we celebrated my 36th birthday. A photo hangs on our wall of me and Rob and 2-year-old Juniper from that evening, smiles smooshed together into a sunset selfie. Some days it’s a hard photo to look at, because I see the less anxious pre-pandemic me. The less tired mother-of-only-one-child me. Life seemed easier then (probably because it was) and sometimes I worry that means I was happier then. Just as places can loom large and perfect in our memory, so can past versions of ourselves.
I questioned the wisdom of the 75-minute drive, convinced Dez would scream the whole way and Juniper would whine of boredom, but Rob insisted it would be special. Miraculously, Dez jabbers happily the entire drive and Juniper doesn’t ask once if we’re there yet. When we get to Kihei, the town we stayed in three years ago, it’s like we’re driving back through time.
“Remember that spot?” we ask Juniper, pointing out our condo with the big beach right out front, the shave ice shop across the street. But the place doesn’t sparkle like the memories do. The condo is just a building, the beach just an ordinary beach. What’s special about it is us, that we’d been there, together, on a precipice we didn’t know was the edge of anything.
The resort appears frozen in time. The eucalyptus trees adorned in twinkle lights, the frangipani-scented lobby, the same pineapple-jalapeño cocktail on the menu. I’m even wearing the same dress, maybe because I love it but maybe because I’m still trying to recreate the past. Before dinner, we walk down to the water to take the same selfie, this time with Juniper batting her eyelashes and Dez chewing on a stuffed animal.
When I look at the photo later during dinner, I finally get it. It’s not about returning to a place that holds a younger version of you so you can be that younger self again (which is good news, since I’m not sure that’s actually possible). It’s that these places can help you really see the person you’ve become—the miles you’ve traveled, the epic journey you’ve been on since you last stood in that very spot. It can be hard to see incremental change looking in the same mirror every morning. A new place has a way of reflecting you in a new light, but an old place presses you right up against your past self. Like two kids standing back-to-back to see who’s tallest, except both kids are you.
Pre-pandemic me didn’t know what she could endure. She didn’t know her love could expand enough for two children. She didn’t really know how lucky she was, but post-pandemic me is even luckier. Stretched thinner, but heart fuller. Older, but stronger. And, I can see it in the photo, a new version of happy. That, I realize, is what I meant by okay, what I’ve hoped returning to this place would reveal.
After dinner, a band is playing by the infinity pool, just like the night of my 36th birthday, when Rob and I watched our daughter bop with toddler abandon. Now she’s lost in the music again, eyes closed and arms outstretched, twirling gracefully in the moonlight. Rob hoists her up and I bounce Dez on my hip. We dance together, the four of us. It’s a perfect moment. From now, not the past. From the other side of an epic journey, where I am more than okay.
What I’m Writing
Right now I’m working on the “Audience” section of my book proposal, so I’m trying to discover more about who my readers are. What they care about, what they want, what they like. And you can help! Just leave a quick comment and tell me a book or show or movie you’ve loved lately. Bonus if it’s related to travel or motherhood, but not required :)
Who I’m Reading
Create Anyway, by Ashlee Gadd. My new writing friend Ashlee is a champion and cheerleader of the pursuit of creativity amid the chaos of motherhood. She is all about finding and making something out of the wonder where you are, and her essays always leave me feeling revived and inspired. I can’t wait for more pep talks and wisdom and beauty in this brand-new book of hers. You can buy it here.
Linea Nigra: An Essay on Pregnancy & Earthquakes, by Jazmina Barrera. Long essay, short book, either way I would’ve read many, many more pages of these perfectly woven fragments on pregnancy, early motherhood, art, and a major earthquake in Mexico City.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin. I was skeptical that I could get into a novel about video game designers, but Zevin proved me very wrong. Really, it’s a story about world building, which is also the work of writers. I found myself nodding yes yes yes to passages about the artistic process of video game design, fascinated by the similarities to my own creative writing process. Plus, I just fell in love with her characters. This is one of those books that I immediately regret finishing because now I can never read it again for the first time—but if you haven’t read it, you still can!
Where I’m Going
Speaking of placeholders, this summer Rob and I are going back to one of our most favorite places on earth: the delicious Basque city of San Sebastián. Our first trip was for our honeymoon, with no kids. Our second was for Rob’s 40th birthday, with our 8-month-old daughter. This time, it’ll be two kids (one with a very long list of severe food allergies). Are we brave? Crazy? A little of both? Stay tuned, I’ll definitely let you know! Either way, it’s been five years since I cracked open my passport and I am READY.
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XO,
Kaitlin
I have only just come across you, more than two years late so I'm sure you're not focusing on audience research right now - hopefully you're finishing off your book! I motherhood and travel are my try favourite categories of books, currently reading "Tom Lake".
I really, really, really loved reading this.