We are midsummer. High sun, abundant thunderstorms, reaching 5 million hours of pool time. Yesterday Gabe told me he wanted to know what the plan was for the day and I pointed to the rocky coast of Maine - where we are now - and said something like, “Look. We are here. This is what we are doing.”

Tomorrow, however, we depart, for the alternate rocky shores of Ireland. A trip that has been months in the making, and which will begin with an airport reunion for the group of 19 (19!) good friends, both adults and children, that makes up our traveling crew and will end with a wedding, which is the reason we are going in the first place.

The car and hotels are booked and the dog is boarded. I have contacted my family in Northern Ireland, which required my Googling directions on how to place the call, and having to use many more prefix numbers that I thought. It took four tries.

I love to plan life’s adventures. And yet, if I’m being honest, sometimes planning the best parts of life, and definitely doing so post-pandemic, makes me anxious. If you presented these situations to me as an observer (from the exciting trips to the personal and professional goals to all the opportunities offered to my kids) I’d say, “Dazzling! What an undoubtedly lucky life!” I’d say, “This is what I value. This is what I want my time on this Earth to look like.”

But then, when I delve into the details, I sometimes wonder if I’m making the wrong decisions. Should we have rented a bigger car? Should we be going on a trip at all? The questions aren’t actually up for answers. Of course we should! And the car will be fine. These are the pesky symptoms of worrying when you’re making big (and sometimes even very small) decisions, especially those involving the people you love. What they are not is actual debates worth wagering.

I’ve writing something (yet to be completed) about the way I’ve been fighting these feelings when they arise, based on the many interviews I’ve done with various experts throughout my writing career. And (spoiler alert) the trick is to welcome them in, while you keep on living. The fastest way to get anxiety, or fear - or whatever that feeling is for you - to dissipate quickly is to greet it warmly, ride that wave, and keep going. Not to get overly dramatic, but it feels like that’s how you go from thinking about living, to actually doing so.

I’ve also been working on writing something about our gerbils, both our former pair (RIP) and our current two, whose names are Cedar and Ginger. I can’t tell them apart.

You'd think these two pieces of writing would be unrelated, but I don’t know about that. Especially after what happened Monday night when J, who had been up here visiting with us in Maine, got home to Connecticut, and I received this text:

“Bit of a situation here. When I went to check on the gerbils I saw that the cage door was open. I guess I left it open. Gerbils had escaped. I found one running around Gabe’s room and got him back into the cage. Still looking for the other.”

Another spoiler alert, he found the other a few hours later in Nora’s closet. But I full-scale panicked while I waited for that news. Yes, it would be very bad to have to tell the children about their beloved pet’s tragic end (could it have gone down the bathtub drain, or into some crevice in the wall never to return…certainly!) but what I couldn’t stop thinking about was the prospect of heading abroad for 12 days while an alive or newly perished gerbil was somewhere in our home, location unknown, possibly forever. That we’d be coming home to that nightmare. It doesn’t seem the most compassionate response, I realize, yet I promise that my worry for its well being played into my overall angst.

When he’d found the second gerbil, however (“Crisis over” he wrote) I couldn’t help thinking, giddily, about the adventure those two had enjoyed. Climbing out of the cage, somehow hopping from the cage onto the bed and from there…the whole world! Or at the very least across the room to Nora’s closet, and down the hall to Gabe’s room.

“Bit of a situation here.” What an understated message to convey this near disaster, this small-scale escapade. Meant to instill a sense of calm concerning what I believe he knew would be particularly upsetting to me.

It also so poetically encapsulates all the feelings I’m trying to express here (maybe all the feelings I’m trying to express all the time!)

Bit of a situation. Isn’t everything? When that small door atop their cage lay tantalizing ajar, I wonder how long it took those two gerbils, their tiny paws raised as though in prayer, their noses twitching, to climb out to whatever awaited them? My guess is they got right on with it, seizing that opportunity; breathed in whatever fears, if any, gerbils possess, and kept moving. My guess is: no time at all.

Dear Nora,

We have passed a crucial threshold, one I knew was coming and pretended was not. You are away for much of the remainder of the summer and Taylor Swift will end her US tour on August 9, not to mention, on the west coast. To see her at this point would be a minor miracle due to the logistics, not to mention the other insurmountable hurdles, the ones I know all too well (ahem).

I know so very much about the Eras tour. I have spent hours investigating how might wrangle a somewhat-reasonably-priced ticket through means of luck, dark sorcery or refreshing the Ticketmaster webpage on repeat until forever, and have come up empty-handed.

And I can already tell that these Eras Tour details, burned into core memories due to the intensity that accompanied them, will occupy my headspace for years to come: that tickets to the Nashville show dropped precipitously on StubHub hours before start time, but in Philly, the phenomenon was reversed, with prices soaring to near $3000 day-of (why?); that one ticket to the day-of show at MetLife Stadium cost $1454 on May 26; the feeling of pure ecstasy when I was granted access to the Ticketmaster queue for Verified Fans that afternoon and carried my phone around the house, including to the bathroom, for a full 25 minutes or more before they unceremoniously declared that there were “no tickets available.” Which I’d guessed, as when I logged on there were a daunting 2000+ people ahead of me in the queue, but my hope was abundant. My delusion grand.

It’s weird to me, Nora, that I know what a “Verified Fan” is. Because I am one! Quite verified, having registered for the presale when the show was announced last year, but not having been graced with a presale code, and therefore shut out before I could even begin. Then no luck at the general sale because, as we all know, it never happened.

(If I could do it over I’d have every family member verified, at their laptops and in it to win it for the presale code, but hindsight is 20/20 is the thing).

And so, I looked to resale tickets. That’s why I know what SeatGeek is, and TickPick, too. I know the Twitter accounts selling tickets fan-to-fan at face value, nearly impossible to score (but impossible to resist trying). I am 45-years-old and I like to garden, read and go out to dinner with your dad. I’d like to learn conversational Italian, but instead I’ve learned what the parking lot setup at Pittsburgh’s Acrisure Stadium looks like and how long it takes to drive there from where we live in Connecticut. Because, I figured, what if we just showed up and partied tailgate style? What if we somehow got in? Those adventures didn’t materialize, but I mentally explored every detail.

Nora, the bulletin board above your bed, with its handwritten, homemade Taylor Swift posters, quotes and album track listings, makes me smile (despite the fact that you took down the card with Henry David Thoreau quote I like so much, I get it). I loved it when you showed me how you can play that song “Invisible String” on your guitar (that’s a good song!) and my heart swells when I hear you singing “I Know Places,” with your little sister.

(On that note, I’m sorry that your brother has formally forbidden Taylor Swift’s music in the minivan, but I think we all have to agree that he has a point regarding how often it is played - which is often - although his proclamation that it makes his “ears bleed” is aggressive).

Perhaps most importantly, I am well aware that this is far from the world’s biggest injustice; that it’s not an injustice at all relatively speaking, and I realize, and am proud, how clearly you’ve embraced this notion. I like how you embody two truths so easily, and with grace: 1) That seeing Taylor Swift, your very favorite artist, would have been the absolute best ever (and I see why it’s this way for you and so many young women - and men! - I see how her music, her very being, is so incredibly compelling; how vulnerable she allows herself to be; how it the lyrics weave their way into all the vast and varied situations of our own lives; I mean, Nora, I like to be in bed reading murder mysteries by approximately 8:30 p.m. and not much later than that please every night, and I recognize the years and years between us, but Karma does “take all my friends to the summit.”) And 2) That not seeing her is ok. It’s fine.

I know, because this is what you told me the other day when I sat you down and said, “Nora, we’re not going to be able to see Taylor Swift.” The words were only halfway out of my mouth when you replied, “Mom it’s OKAY.” Loudly, emphatically, like you couldn’t bear my disappointment. I tried to keep going, explaining that I knew it was frustrating that lots of people, apparently anyway, didn’t get tickets to see her, and yet it somehow feels like every single person we know did get tickets. And how it wasn’t a smart financial decision for us to spend like $2000 going to this show - actually more like $3000 because how could we leave Aidy at home? - and you put your hand up yet again to quiet me, like I was the kid.

There is a lesson here about how Ticketmaster made mistakes and is a monopoly with too much power, and how these resellers letting the sales balloon to exorbitant rates are pretty evil, if not totally, very evil, but I don’t have the energy to fight or even explore that particular issue and how capitalism promotes this sort of thing. I think you and I both know that that just is.

But I’ve realized that there is not a lesson here for you otherwise. Or to put a finer point on it, that you already know this lesson. That sometimes things don’t work out the way we want them to (and if you want me to go further with this, which I know you do not, that this often makes us stronger). That it is fine to be dejected by not getting what we want when it comes to our more frivolous, if fervent desires, while also keeping perspective.

When you were a baby, I was shocked by the transformation of becoming a parent after my 30 years of very much not being one, and everything felt a little difficult at first. But later, after your first year, and definitely when your younger brother was born (absolutely screaming!) I told people that I wished I’d realized what an incredibly easy infant you were when it was happening, but that I had nothing to compare you to. You slept for hours. You comforted yourself easily. You did not get all infuriated at life’s insurmountable challenges.

This Taylor Swift fiasco is the least of this world’s worries. And yet it’s provided a helpful lesson for me; another reminder of your lovely and reassuring personality. Your tranquil ease, your patience.

That parenting a teenager is legendarily difficult, and yet I might want to remind myself how very easy you make it while we are still in it.

Also, because it must be said. If she every goes on tour again, I’ll be first in line and prepared to surmount whatever virtual or physical test they put me through in order to get tickets, Nora. Best believe it.

xoxoxo

your mom