If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?
This wasn’t something I spent much time thinking about. My life of raising kids and writing from home hardly left enough in the discretionary travel fund to support this kind of daydreaming. Then last fall, my aunt said to me —out of nowhere—”Next year you’ll be turning 50 and I’ll be turning 70 and I would like to take you on a trip to celebrate. Anywhere you want to go. You name it and we’ll go there.” My mind didn’t go blank. I didn’t feel any longings to spend the week scouring travel sites or asking friends for recommendations. I didn’t even stop to run the numbers on, say, a trip I’d have a hard time affording on my own vs. say, a trip it was safe to assume I wouldn’t be taking in this lifetime. I simply reached back into the one file I had open in my brain that contained the words “one day I’d really like to go there” and there it was. “Taize,” I said. “I’d like to go to Taize.”