If Eric needed a ride from the airport, I was usually the first person he contacted.

But sometimes weeks passed without anyone calling simply to ask how I was doing.

I told myself that was normal.

Everyone was busy.

Families depended on one another.

Then one Tuesday morning, I stood in my kitchen looking at my calendar.

Almost every square was filled.

My grandson’s soccer tournament.

Melissa’s dentist appointment because I was watching her daughter.

A reminder to transfer money to David.

Errands.

Appointments.

Other people’s plans.

Nothing on that calendar belonged to me.

I was sixty-nine years old.

And suddenly I realized I had spent most of my life waiting for “someday.”

Someday Robert and I would visit Italy.

Someday we would see Japan.

Someday we would travel through Australia.

Someday I would sit in a café in Paris and order something I couldn’t pronounce.

Robert and I had talked about traveling after retirement.

Then he got sick.

Our someday ended before it ever began.

So I made a decision.

I sold my house.

Then I booked a trip around the world.

My children reacted as though I had committed some terrible betrayal.

“You’re being selfish, Mom,” Karen said.

“What about the grandchildren?” Melissa asked.

David stared at me.

“You’re really going to waste all that money traveling?”

Then Eric said the thing that surprised me most.

“That house was supposed to stay in the family.”

I looked at him.

“It was my house.”

He didn’t like that answer.

When I refused to cancel my plans, Karen and David stopped speaking to me for a while.

That hurt.

But I went anyway.

I told myself that while I could still walk through airports, carry my suitcase, climb stairs, and explore without asking anyone’s permission, I was going to see as much of the world as possible.

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