London, November 2022

Traveling has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. One of my earliest memories is of boarding a plane from SeaTac airport to Lagos, Nigeria with my mother and younger brother. The aircraft must have been a Boeing 737. As we stepped on to the tarmac, a nice, delectably manicured flight attended offered my brother and I packs of gummy bears. That was back (a few years before the 90s) when adults freely offered candy to children without asking about dietary restrictions. Fortunately for us, we had no restrictions, so our mother did not object. I tore the bag open with my teeth, not unlike a feral baby animal, and feasted on the bright, waxy prize. It tasted like cough medicine with a vague essence of tangy fruit. I ate all the candy in my bag.

I was four at the time, and we were on our way to meet my father, who had completed his PhD at the University of Washington the previous year. Now he was in Lagos, where he'd been living for half a year, figuring out how to settle his family on the land he'd inherited from his parents. Given that my brother and I had been born in Seattle, WA, and our parents had been too busy and perhaps too broke to travel very far beyond the Northwest, this was our first trip to Nigeria.

I remember the laterite brilliance of the earth in Nigeria; standing in my maternal grandmother's mosaic-tiled bathtub, shivering as she sponged me down, sudsy water pooling at my feet. Then later, riding pygmy horses at Bar Beach. Drinking pouch after pouch of apple- and orange-flavored CapriSun. Watching my toddler brother chase flies.

Our father ended up not getting the teaching position he wanted. Maybe if he'd searched another year longer, we would have re-planted our roots. But my parents had grown used to certain comforts, and they could not see themselves with two small American children, awaiting a better future that might not materialize. So they packed up and returned to the States. Things picked up year after year, and from what I know, my parents never regretted their decision.

Getting to the part about London

By now, if you're still reading, you might be asking yourself what on earth this has to do with London. Fair question.

What are your thoughts on Locke's tabula rasa? Are children born with "blank" mental slates that get imprinted over time by the particularities of their life experience? I don't know. That's a question that demands an absolute "yes" or "no" as an answer. There would be no nuance there.

What I do know is that my first significant travel experience, that trip abroad to Nigeria when I was four, set the tone for the dozens of other trips I've taken since then. The excitement, the disorientation and the general sense, though I didn't know this as a kid, that by crossing geographic boundaries, especially when they intersected with a new or different culture, I was unlocking more of my human potential to see, empathize, discover, and create.

So the trip to London was short but sweet. A much-needed break from routine. Here are some photos.