This story is part of our January 2025 issue. To subscribe, click here.

When my daughter was three months old, we traveled from California to London to visit my parents and the rest of my extended family. It was the first of scores of trips that I have taken with my children in the 21 years since then.

My then-wife, Julie, and I used to drive the children across the country each year, visiting historic sites and scenic wonders, meeting up with friends in cities around this vast land, and finally ending up in New York with Julie’s family. When my son was an infant, we decamped to Iceland for a couple weeks. We visited most countries and many great cities in Western Europe, traveled around Canada, flew to the Caribbean, spent 10 weeks exploring Chile and took Amtrak trains around the U.S. 

At one point, I took my then-10-year-old son on a hiking trip, in searing temperatures far in excess of 120 degrees Fahrenheit, two-thirds of the way down the Grand Canyon. It triggered a love of hiking that, seven years later, now manifests in him going off into the wilderness with his friends to backcountry hike and camp for days on end.

This past summer, my daughter graduated from UC Berkeley and my son from high school. Before she entered the job market and he went off to university, I decided to take them on one more epic adventure. After saving money for a year, I booked the three of us air tickets to Lima, Peru, and from there to the high Andes city of Cusco, more than 12,000 feet above sea level. From Cusco we joined a tour that took us around a series of stunning ruined Incan towns, culminating in the epic spectacle of Machu Picchu. 

For me, it was one of the high points of my life. I have been lucky in my travels, journeying to more than 50 countries so far, spread across five continents, and spending months of each year exploring and writing about the world. Machu Picchu has been on my bucket list since I was a teenager. But, for one reason or another, I’d never made it there until this past summer. Suffice it to say, despite the long security lines to get in and the crowds that, at times, made it feel as if we were in a theme park, the ruined city lived up to my expectations. It was a majestic, improbable place perched on the edge of an abyss. A place that made no sense and yet was there in cold stone.

My kids, however, were not so impressed. They loved Lima, adored the narrow cobbled streets, the plazas, the great churches of Cusco, were beguiled by the Quechuan villages and textile coops that we visited; they were awed by the spectacle of the traditionally clothed dancers at the Inti Raymi festival in Cusco’s main square; they loved the smaller ruined Incan cities, such as Ollantaytambo, which snakes up the side of a mountain from a valley floor. But Machu Picchu itself, with its Disneyland-crowd vibes and its influencers snapping selfies, left them both slightly cold. 

I understood their reaction, even if it did make me somewhat melancholy. They were dancing to their own tune, and nobody — not even their father — was going to tell them what they had to like.
And that’s how it goes. We raise our children in the best way we know how. We give them the tools they need, the confidence they require to pack a bag, get on a plane or train or boat, and head thousands of miles away to explore an unknown land — and then, when they do, and when they reach their own conclusions as to what they like and what they don’t like, we shed bittersweet tears, endlessly proud of their independence and fortitude; endlessly sad at having reached that fork in the road so soon.

I look back now, and I realize how cruel the confidence of youth can be. When I left the U.K. in 1993, I was barely 21 years old. I packed six suitcases, bought an air ticket to New York, landed at JFK, took a yellow cab to my new home at International House and started my classes at Columbia University’s graduate school of journalism. I remember how my grandmother in London pleaded with me not to go, and then when I did, not to stay. I remember, too, how bravely my parents refused to go down that same road, offering me only words of encouragement and joy. At the time, I took their fortitude for granted — of course they were happy for me, of course they gave the stamp of approval to me spreading my wings.

With hindsight, I realize none of that was inevitable. They could have thrown up emotional roadblocks. But they let me fledge. And now, as I grapple with the reality of an empty nest, it is time for me to let my own children soar.   

Stay up to date on business in the Capital Region: Subscribe to the Comstock’s newsletter today.