Where did you go, wanderlust?

Try as you might, you can't force yourself back into the mindset of your 20something self.

On Sunday, I saw my 19-year-old daughter Clio off to Argentina for six weeks at a language study program. «Insert tiny sob here» I’ve LOVED having both her and her twin sibling back with us for the past month-ish, and relished the temporary return to what feels normal not “new normal”(i.e. a lake that sometimes goes rogue). More noise, more voices, more shoes. More groceries and dishes, too, but whatever.

At the same time, I am thrilled for Clio, and extremely proud. She made this trip happen under her own steam—did the research, got a grant from her school to cover the tuition, worked and saved during the year, figured out all the details. This from a kid who once famously had her backpack flagged at airport security because there was a rotten banana in it. (Guess it looked like a liquid. Or a really weird gun.)

This kind of adventure is exactly what a nineteen-year-old should be doing, if they have the means and desire. It’s exactly the sort of thing I did at her age, and into my early twenties. A college semsester in Cameroon, followed by a week in Paris. Six weeks studying spanish and traveling solo in Guatemala. Ten weeks traveling alone in South America.

There aren’t actually giraffes in Cameroon, where this picture was taken, but I liked the frame.

I had, for a while, planned to do a solo trip to India, too. But then I got married. I went to Iowa to get my MFA, and started pursuing writing seriously. I acquired furniture that I actually wanted to keep. As I felt increasingly rooted in my life and ambitions—in my identity, I guess you could say—that insatiable hunger to explore the big wide world on my own faded.

Quel cliché.

Not that I don’t still love to travel! Oh, man, do I ever. And I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to do it multiple times over the past few years. I do love a brief solo adventure, too—a hike, a writing retreat, a book- or writing-related event.

But the idea of spending an extended period of time away from home, alone, just feels lonely. And sort of pointless. Which is really annoying, because I want to want to do it, you know? But you can’t make yourself want something when you don’t. You can’t force yourself back into the mindset of your 19, 22, 25-year-old self.

Take Paris. I fucking love Paris. I’ve been there five times now, the latest time being a few weeks ago (with Clio, prior to joining the rest of the family, grandparents included, for a week in the Bordeaux region.) For a long time, I’ve said that once I’m an empty nester, I want to go live in Paris for a few months or even longer—be an expat, work remotely from some adorable little apartment, spend afternoons writing in cafés. My husband could come and stay for a while. I’d invite friends to come visit. I’d finally get off the intermediate French language plateau I’ve been on forever. I’d start dressing better. Maybe take a lover. (JUST KIDDING HONEY.)

But when I was in Paris last month—still loving the city as much as ever—I was very much aware of how much I would miss my husband, my friends, my family, and my own bed if I went and lived there for a while. This is shit I never would have felt at 23.

Was I lonely and homesick at times when I was traveling around South America or living in a rural Cameroonian village by myself? Absolutely. But I felt a sense of purpose. There was a point to my travels: to prove my self-suffiency and courage to myself; to be able to spend hours observing and writing and reading, fostering my nascent writing skills and enriching my mind; to see, firsthand, how people in other places and cultures lived; to see if I could manage to learn and get by in a foreign language; even just to get comfortable with boredom and loneliness—not have it freak me out.

But all that stuff (minus the foreign language part—still a passion) was the stuff of the young, new-to-adulthood me. The “what am I going to do with my life?” and “the world is full of mysteries” and “I have a zillion more years to live” and “what’s the point of using moisturizer?” me. (Goddammit, that last me!)

It’s a me that is no more—although certainly everything I did and learned during that window is part of who I am today: Confident, self-sufficient, worldly (if I do say so myself). Comfortable in unfamiliar places and situations. Willing to rough it a little. (But definitely no longer willing to “sleep” on a chair at Heathrow because I bought the cheapest possible flight itinerary—the one with three stops and an overnight layover.)

I guess I hoped that maybe in this new, empty nest stage of life some of that hunger for long, solo adventures would return.

But it hasn’t.

I’m too rooted, too comfortable, too tethered to my family. I wouldn’t trade my current reality for anything, mind you. I am happy. But damn, I do I miss that me-and-a-backpack-and-a-whole-world-to-explore feeling sometimes.

I just can’t conjure it up, though, even when I try.

I hope my daughter has the time of her life.

Clio in Paris, May 2026

Me in Paris, May 1995

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