Michelle Martin

One at a time

Wednesday, January 10, 2018

Frank and I may have picked the worst weather weekend of the season to visit New York City.

Our original flight was cancelled because of the bomb cyclone that paralyzed the East Coast; the following day, we arrived to bitter cold and biting wind. 

Even so, it was actually warmer in New York than in Chicago, so we put on our coats and hats and gloves and explored on foot and on public transit. It was Frank’s first visit to New York, so we stopped at Times Square and at the 9/11 Memorial, went to an Islanders hockey game and walked over the Brooklyn Bridge.
It was a far different visit from the first time I took Caroline to New York. She was 7, and my sister-in-law and I took her to the Statue of Liberty and to see “Beauty and the Beast” on Broadway. We still have photographs she took at Ground Zero, which was not yet a formal memorial in 2005. 
We also walked through Rockefeller Plaza and Central Park, given that temperatures then were in the 30s and 40s, rather than in the single digits.

That first trip started a tradition of having each of the kids travel one-on-one with me or my husband, usually for no more than a weekend. Frank, who enjoys not only travelling but planning trips, has done the most, with visits to Detroit and Kansas City to see baseball games. Last summer, we went to Colorado for college visits — and managed to catch a baseball game, too.

Caroline went to Boston a couple of times for college visits, and Teresa has been with her dad to visit Caroline at school in Boston. Now Teresa wants to go to New York too.

The trips give us a chance to spend time with each child without the distractions and pressures of home; there’s no work or school, no other kids competing for attention. Letting them set the agenda allows us to join in their interests and try to see a new part of the world through their eyes. The kids also get to see us a little differently, as we deal with inevitable bumps in the road and happy accidents that come with travel and literally getting out of our comfort zones.

There’s a reason so many stories focus on journeys. The story of Jesus’ life we get in the Gospels can be presented as a series of journeys: of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem, the visit of the magi, the flight to Egypt, young Jesus’ visit to the temple in Jerusalem, his itinerant ministry, entry into Jerusalem and final passage to Calvary. 

In those journeys, Jesus revealed himself as the Son of God and the savior of the world. 

Our journeys, of course, cannot be compared. But they can help us to see and to share with one another the gifts that each of us have been given.

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