Today, Chris and I flew into Phoenix and met my parents for our long weekend of exploring Phoenix, Scottsdale, Sedona, and the Grand Canyon National Park. As an added bonus, I arranged some time with my friend from Wellesley, who I haven’t seen since graduation almost six years ago. She moved to China to teach English, found an expat she fell in love with, got married, and moved back to Arizona with him.

It was hard to read her husband in the beginning. He was very quiet, serious, and had interesting eye movements. He was soft spoken most of the time and seemed very intent on… just observing. Based on what I know about my friend, I knew she would not pick a boring mute as a husband, so I knew he was a deep-thinker type, so eventually he started opening up, and I discovered his crazy sense of humor and wit that would no doubt attract my friend who I traveled to China with. He’s a balloon artist (not the clown type), and his goal in life is to make kids happy. If someone else said this to me, I’d call their bluff. When he said this to us, I really believed it.

After they generously dropped us off at our hotel at the end of the evening and we were parting ways, he gives me a big hug (as he’s a big man) and says, “Even though we spent the last several hours together, I realize I didn’t really get to ask you much. What is your purpose in life? What do you live for?” The question caught me so off guard that I initially just laughed. Because it was a big question for the minute we had left together, I said to him that I was still searching for my purpose and didn’t quite know what it was just yet.

In the midst of all my traveling, reading, brain games, theater, cooking, eating, exercising, grocery shopping, friends, family, cute things obsessing – what the hell is my purpose, anyway?

Today, I had a visit with my therapist again. I can count on one hand the number of visits I have left with her before she ends her time here. We talked about my upcoming trip to Phoenix and the Grand Canyon with my parents and Chris, and my thoughts around it.

I explained to her that my parents generally don’t take vacations. It’s not that they can’t afford it; they certainly can, but my dad is a homebody and generally doesn’t like to go anywhere because he likes being in familiar areas and thinks everything is a rip off or too expensive, and my mom is scared of the world and won’t go anywhere unless someone else suggests it to her first and then guides her around there (my dad won’t do this). So I told my therapist that unless I book, plan, and go with them on any “vacations,” the vacation will never happen for them.

She responds and says how mature that is on my part. She thinks it’s amazing I recognize this fact about my parents, but want to enhance their lives by planning these trips and then even going along with them, as she can imagine most kids would NOT want to do this, and would merely think, “eh, they’re miserable,” and let their parents continue on in their misery. They are who they are. I think I am getting too much credit for this.

While traveling with my parents is certainly not the easiest thing to do, I’m willing to do this because I’d like us to have shared, happy experiences, and I want them to see that there is more to life than all the work and pain and suffering they’ve had to go through. In most cases, the most rewarding things in life are not the easiest things to do.

The sad part about this trip is that we were supposed to have taken it this time last year with Ed. I guess this time, Chris and Bart will have to go in his place.