And it began. Vacation. Trip of a lifetime. Europe. With my father, stepmom, brother, aunt, close family-friend.
To describe in detail all that we saw and did…would take a book, I suppose. In a whirlwind — as it felt like while it was happening – came London with the famous phone booths, and double-decker buses and Buckingham Palace, complete with the changing of the guards. People driving on the wrong side of vehicles, on the wrong side of the road. English-speaking folk that sounded nothing like Americans. Hyde Park, where all was green and daffodils were blooming. Subway trips and maps, Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London and the crown jewels, the London Bridge and a ferry-boat ride down the Thames. Crossing Abbey Road as the Beatles did, and the Museum of Natural Sciences…Blokes and mates, and older women called “biddies”, too. A Sunday-football game (soccer) that transformed the whole energy of the city, and turned grown men into saucy lads, hugging each other and bellowing in the pubs at night. Currency in pounds, Fish and Chips, Bangers and Mash (sausage and potatoes) and everything served with peas. A land of tossing back a pint of Boddington’s or London Pride Ale, or five, and full-on belly laughs… 
Fast-forward a few days — and a train ride that went underground, below the English Channel — and we were in Paris! And the Eiffel Tower! The Arc de Triomph, and Notre Dame. The Palace of Versailles, the Louvre and the Mona Lisa, the Musée d’Orsay with a floor of Impressionists and Musée de l’Orangerie, submersed in Monet’s water lilies. Bridges over the Seine, sidewalk markets lining the streets with colorful art, a scarf on every male and female in sight. Subways even more crowded than London, and a French-speaking country with signage and menus depicting foreign prices in euros…Café’s and patisseries with crepes, eclairs and baguettes, chocolatiers and cheese shops you could smell before entering. Neighborhood pubs with little kids, and little dogs. Intimate settings and narrow stairways, high-end couture (and pickpockets, too). Fashion. Beauty. Art. And, more Beauty…
It was 10 days of all of that…non-stop eye-candy galore. Stylish people, gorgeous and artful places, scenes and sounds I know now, tastes I will never forget…knowing that when someone speaks of London or Paris – I, too, know what they love. It was all so, so easy to love.
But to say it was the cities or the sights that created the memories would be stripping the experience of that which I will forever hold dear. I went on this vacation to fully experience whatever was in front of me, with my family. Not my partner and my kids, but my roots.
It was with these people, in and through these people…
Standing outside a swanky pub one night in Paris, my brother, my dad and me. My dad and I laughing about our memories together from my childhood, building block towers and playing “The Name Game”… and listening as my brother and dad shared their memories, their games and laughs from his childhood — fourteen years later than mine. Different memories, different children — same Amazing father.
It was… him, our dad. Standing there, looking at us both, smiling ear-to-ear, saying, “Look at us. Here,” holding out his arms to Paris, “Here. I’m so glad we’re here. I’m so glad we made it here.”
It was the stories he told standing there, the hug the three of us shared…I will tell my kids about, again and again.
It was the moment my stepmom accidentally got on a subway too soon, and the flash-feeling of pure terror as she was being whisked away in a foreign city…And the quick-thinking of my father to yell, “One stop!”
It was the absolute relief on his face…and true, genuine love shown as he hugged her when we all met up again. One stop later.
It was… them. Being with them. Two of my three parents.
It was traveling with a group that held the youth of my brother, so young and fresh and at a point in his life… that is now behind me. College days, choices in life still to be determined, trying to figure out who to be and how to get there…And in the same group, my aunt, living in the next phase of life in front of me – her twin sons graduating high school this year, her oldest already off studying abroad. It will soon be just her and her husband in the life they’ve built, changes coming only empty-nesters understand.
It was…finding myself completely in the middle of my youth and my future, and being just old enough and almost wise enough to appreciate the Now of exactly that.
It was passing families and Mamas with their kids, and the arrow that shot through my heart as my hand automatically reached down to touch my little ones…that weren’t with me. Or the times I turned to tell my partner something…laugh at something he and I would laugh at, but he wasn’t there either. Running the time change in my mind…realizing my family was sitting down to dinner at 6 p.m. as I sat in a Parisian pub at midnight, or the kids were still in school at 11 a.m. as I wandered about an art museum at 4 p.m. in London. It was missing them, and continuously re-realizing how vastly different my current vacation setting was from my norm. And fully appreciating… both missing them, and my current vacation setting.
It was roaming a foreign country with lifelong best friends – my dad, stepmom and close family friend. Their familiarity with each other, their jokes, their stories. It was knowing they have each other – whatever else may come as they grow older together.
It was my brother rapping all the words to an Eminem song down into the subway. It was my aunt coming down ill, and fighting through it to see Versailles and seize the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It was lighting a prayer candle in a silent church, older than our country. It was passing around a bottle of wine in the streets of Paris.
It was moments I laughed so hard, I cried.
It was pints of good beer, and plentiful wine.
It was friendship, and family and love.
It was London. It was Paris.
It was…
JEN’S ZEN
— Because the damn dishes are never done. Laundry is a cruel joke. And because children are beautiful lessons in Patience and Counting. 10, 9, 8, 7 Breathe…