I suppose the story of the journey I took to Africa and beyond with my 15-year-old, Malibu-raised son began well before we left.
It was a foggy Malibu morning, and my son Ari was still asleep as I read through the e-mails that came in overnight. Reading about the options-chimp sanctuary in Uganda, safari on the Serengeti, working at a school in Tanzania-I was cozy and warm in my Tempurpedic bed, listening to the sounds of the morning in my comfortable Malibu world. The trash truck was outside; a few dogs were barking, the usual birds were chirping, and not much else. At that point, whenever I talked about packing it up and hitting the road for two and a half months to travel the globe with my teenage boy, it was as though it was happening to someone else. I felt almost a curiosity, an interest, in how this woman in her 40s, very attached to her creature comforts and routines, thought she was going to handle leaving her comfortable life and wander around the world with her son.
I remember running into one of Ari’s former teachers, a favorite among all the children, at his school; one of those true teachers who turns children’s lives around and remain unforgettable for life. Mr. B. was obviously pleased to hear about my insane plans.
“So how do you get to do this?”
He knew I wasn’t one of the Malibu wealthy, and he was obviously wondering about the cost of the unbelievable itinerary I’d shared with him: Uganda, Ngamba Island and one of Jane Goodall’s chimp sanctuaries, a week with a former Black Panther, volunteering at his compound in Tanzania, a safari, visits with several African tribes…and then on to Australia and a month wandering New Zealand.
Sheepishly I told him, “I really haven’t figured the financial part out quite yet. Maybe rent my house. Write a book. Speak here and there. I don’t know. I figured I’d work backward; decide to go and then find a way.”
“That’s how you should approach it,” he said. “Just set your sights and then figure out the steps that will get you there. Otherwise, you’ll never go.”
This was the advice I got from so many people whose children were now grown, who had once had a fantasy like mine-to take their children out to see more than Malibu, more of the “real world,” and share adventures and experiences that would last a lifetime. I felt like I’d drawn the short straw, and somehow been elected to live out a dream that so many people seemed to be secretly harboring.
The rhythms of our lives make it easy to stop thinking about something as radical as just leaving for a while. If you had asked me, for instance, what seemed hardest about the trip, I wouldn’t have talked about the cost of it, or the complexity of the planning, or home schooling my son on the road. It would have been about not getting to lie in my very own bed on a foggy morning, surrounded by what’s familiar. As adventurous and well-traveled as I considered myself to be, I think it’s the Hobbit in most of us that keeps us home, that keeps us safe, that keeps us from venturing out of our comfort zone, both physically and psychologically.
There were moments, after we’d been gone for a while, living out of backpacks and inventing each day as we went-“Are we done with Queenstown? Shall we hit the road and head East for a while?”-that I would remember I had a house back in Malibu, and so many things! Once we got into the nomadic rhythm of moving every day or two, I developed a sense of wonder at my world back home. Life became so simple. So slow and so simple, and so very in the moment.
We came back filled to the brim with stories and adventure, and a renewed bond of mother and son, co-adventurers and gypsies. Looking back on our trip now, it’s clear that it wasn’t watching the lions a few feet away, or experiencing that ancient and familiar connection with women (mothers) in the Totonga tribe, or the children running to the side of the road as we drove through dusty villages hoping for a pen-because their families couldn’t afford one-and watching them beam magnificent smiles even when our pens had long run out that created this sense of wonder and bonding. It wasn’t the eye-popping green of New Zealand, or the chance to visit a two-room school where kindergartners through eighth graders learn and play happily together in the foothills of “Mordor,” or even landing by helicopter on top of an absolutely pristine glacier. It was all of it.
And most of all, it was the chance to share these moments with my son, to give him a chance to understand that he isn’t a citizen of Malibu, or even the United States-he is a citizen of a magnificent world, filled with extraordinary human beings.
I can still hardly believe I pulled it together to take that trip, but I’m deeply grateful that somehow I did. I say that as I write … from the comfort of my cozy bed. And once again, I hear my gypsy song … Lately, we’ve been thinking a great deal about Nepal …