I recently got back from a short but very meaningful trip to Philadelphia.
I grew up in Philly. At least partly. My bicoastal childhood had two acts, and though Philly got the earlier half, the one I don’t remember quite as strongly, it made its mark. This is probably most noticeable during baseball season, when I ride hard with my Phillies, during improv scenes when I play up Philly characters, or whenever I say the words water or orange.
Despite those hallmarks, though, it has been a while. When my aunts moved to LA years ago, I no longer had any family or close friends remaining in the city. And since time passes pretty quickly, it's been over a decade since I’ve been back.
My five year old just so happened to be on Spring Break, and when I weighed the options of spending extra on babysitters and manipulating my schedule yet again versus the prospect of taking a few days off and going on a trip… it was an obvious choice. Plus, it’s not like Philly is the most in-demand destination for early April.
We wound up getting water ice on our very first day. We spent a day in the Franklin Institute, which has an impressive set of displays for kids to enjoy. He got to try his first and second cheesesteaks as we ate at Dalessandro’s and Chubbies’ back-to-back. (For what it’s worth, Dalessandro’s was my pick for the winner and he had the opposite take. Love a kid who forms his own opinions!)
And of course, we went to a Phillies game and it was a treat to see them face the unbeaten Dodgers and hand them their first loss. Citizens Bank Park is an electric place.
It was a short and simple trip that reminded me of how much I missed Wawa and that made me wonder about my “how-it-could’ve-gone” life like the movie Past Lives.
It was about this time last year that the two of us went to Finland.
Another father-son trip that was truly the best. Having just renewed his passport, I’ve got to note the pretty cool collection of stamps we got in his first issue: the Philippines, Guatemala, Spain, Canada, Portugal, Estonia, and Finland.
He and I have done more trips than my twins, but that’s just because they’re younger! In my notes app, I have an ongoing brainstorm of ways to make sure they’re equally treated to some fun trips with Dad.
Is it a lot? Probably, and I’m aware of it. But travel is one of my favorite things about being alive, and it’s a love I’m happy to pass on to them. At the very least, I want them to be well-introduced to different places and cultures and to give them a chance to develop a love of travel on their own.
Also, in a family of five, a full house is our norm. I wouldn’t have it any other way, but there are tradeoffs. One of those trade-offs is the fact that traveling with our full-sized family is pretty expensive and that each individual traveler probably gets a little less out of the experience as we compromise for five rather than two. Another one is that one-on-one time is scarce. When caring for three, it’s easy to get caught up in my role as a referee for the inevitable spats three kids close in age will get into. When I get a little extended one-on-one time, it becomes so much easier to appreciate each kid’s unique persona.
Being able to do this, of course, is a really big privilege. I can’t take for granted that I’m pretty fortunate to have the resources, the time, the health to take these trips… not to mention the spouse and support system that leaves the other two kids in good hands.
But that’s all the more reason not to squander the opportunity.
The wish to travel with my kids isn’t original.
I’ve been told that my dad had a map that he marked of places he wished to take me someday. He passed away when I was five, and since most of our time together was taken by me being a baby, then him being sick, we never actually did get to do a whole lot of travel. I’ve heard stories of a late-stage trip to Hawaii that he and my mom took, both thinking they were doing it for each other, that ended up being rather difficult.
Unfortunately, nobody really took a picture of that map. Much like his record-collection which was sold at a garage sale before I had an appreciation for older music, it’ll remain a mystery about how much our tastes overlapped. Even more so, I’m curious how many of them I ultimately found my way to on my own. I’ve made it to every state and nearly 60 countries, so there have got to be a few! I do wonder which was the most unlikely.
I don’t take the opportunity to travel with my kids for granted. It’s something my dad wished for and never got. And in an alternate timeline where we got more time together, I bet it’s a fondness we would have shared.
It’s not just about the trips, though.
I mean, whenever I have the chance to go big, I love going big. In Finland, we made our way into the Arctic Circle to watch the Northern Lights. But I also realize that the thing that’s even bigger than the destination is the time we get together.
While my hope is to do a bigger one-on-one trip each year, with the kids in rotation, I also try to make sure that once a month we also get a special field trip, whether it’s a museum or a hike or a market. It’s a lot of coordinating on top of all the coordinating that already happens, but I’ve been reassured by my friends with grown children that it’s a move that won’t be regretted.
There was one other stop we had to make in Philly.
The house I grew up in, where I was living when I was five years old.
We found it in the Northeast Suburbs.
It actually wasn’t the easiest house to track down. I lived there at a time before I had a sense of Philadelphia’s geography. I could barely remember the street name. But with a little sleuthing, I found the street, then the house number.
It appears that the house last sold in 2010, and the photos from that listing show an interior a little bit different than the one I remember. When I lived there it was a total 70’s house (in the 90’s). I’m talking about bright yellow sunflower print wallpaper, avocado green shag carpeting, and elaborate gold trim on everything. I can’t say I’m surprised the more recent occupants decided it wasn’t their taste.
But the layout was still there. I saw the lowered den that served as my playroom, the one that opened into the backyard where I had some of my earliest birthday parties.
The house probably has an odd spot in my family’s story. It was never owned by my parents, but instead by my aunts, who offered it to assist with caretaking. It was where my dad passed away. Shortly afterwards, my mom didn’t want to stay there much longer, which makes total sense. But in that window of time it became home to me.
When I did a neighborhood walk through with my five year old, it seemed like it remained a pretty nice house, and only twenty minutes outside of the city.
As it turns out, the neighborhood I grew up in has become pretty cool. Or maybe it was always cool and I just wouldn’t have known. But there are plenty of neat coffee shops in the area, and some international flavors you don’t see everywhere. There were a number of Georgian restaurants and a lot of spots to get khachapuri. We even got dinner afterwards at an Uzbek restaurant.
When my grandma turned eighty, she declared “I am now in my bonus years.”
Her calculation was Biblical. Sort of. Psalm 90 poetically says that the days of our years are threescore years and ten, which tally up to 70, but English was her second language. Also, she had absurdly good genetics, eventually reaching the age of 98. So maybe she was adjusting for inflation.
But what struck me was that concept of living in bonus time.
My oldest kid is the same age I was when my dad passed away. In two years, my twins will also cross that threshold. Thinking of that makes me realize that every moment I get with him from here on out will be an opportunity that my dad didn’t quite get with me.
Parenthood is a busy ordeal, but I want it to be less of a series of things I must do, and more of a gift I get to wake up to each day.
Lately, the membrane between life and death has felt thinner than normal, perhaps thanks to Easter and several dramatic health episodes among people in my orbit. But I don’t ever want to lose sight of the fact that I’m living in the years of fatherhood that my dad didn’t get. In the years of adulthood a dearly missed friend didn’t get. In a decade that my grandma didn’t get.
It’s a gift to be here. A really big gift.