Permission

“Headed home or heading out?” he asked.

His name was Robert. He was seventy-one, a retired civil engineer from Portland, flying to Munich to visit his daughter for Christmas. His wife had died four years earlier.

“And you?” he asked.

I told him about the twelve-day tour through Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

“Alone?”

“Alone.”

“Good for you,” he said.

“It’s the first time I’ve done anything like this since my husband died.”

“How long?”

“Eight years.”

He nodded.

“Mine was four. It took me three years to leave the house for anything except groceries.”

“I didn’t leave my town for anything except groceries.”

“Why did you finally?”

I thought about Hannah’s voice on the phone and the quiet house with decorations I had put up for people who were not coming.

“I was told to stay home.”

“By someone who should have known better?”

“My daughter-in-law.”

He was quiet.

“And instead?”

“And instead, I came to Europe.”

He smiled.

We never exchanged numbers. We wished each other well in Frankfurt and went our separate ways.

That was the whole of Robert from Portland.

And somehow, it was exactly enough.

I had not been on a group tour since Paul and I went to England in 1992. After Paul died, I had spent eight years taking care of everyone else and stopped wanting things for myself.

Our group had twenty-four people.

I quickly became friends with Patricia, a sixty-nine-year-old retired attorney from Atlanta.

“What about you?” she asked.

“I was told to stay home for Christmas.”

“So you booked a European tour.”

“Yes.”

“Good,” she said. “I was told I was too old to start over. So I retired and started over.”

I knew immediately that I liked her.

There was also Gerald, a retired history teacher from Seattle, who could not stop teaching even in retirement. He told us about every town we visited, every building, every trade route.

I listened.

I realized I had not listened to someone talk passionately about something in a very long time.

The first city was Rothenburg ob der Tauber. The Christmas market looked like something inside a snow globe.

Patricia bought a wooden ornament.

“Do you have a tree this year?” she asked.

“Yes. I decorated it before I left.”

“For yourself?”

“It started for my son and daughter-in-law. It ended for me.”

“That’s a good ending,” she said.

I bought a small glass globe and carried it in my hand luggage.

We traveled through Nuremberg, Munich, Salzburg, Innsbruck, and Switzerland.

In Innsbruck, I saw mountains for the first time since Paul and I had driven through Colorado.

They changed my perspective.

The empty house moved backward.

Hannah’s voice moved backward.

The eight years of making myself small enough to fit into other people’s plans moved backward.

The mountains were simply there.

Patricia stood beside me without saying anything.

She knew when not to speak.

I had not had a friend like that in a long time.

On the seventh day, in Lucerne, I posted photographs from the trip.

One showed me standing on a bridge with Patricia and Gerald, all three of us laughing.

I had not seen myself laugh in a photograph in eight years.

My phone filled with messages.

Friends. Neighbors. People from church. People I had not spoken to in years.

Everyone said the same things:

You look wonderful.

You look so happy.

Where have you been?

Mark called that night.

“Mom. Who is that?”

“His name is Gerald. He’s a retired teacher from Seattle.”

“You look…”

“Happy?”

There was a pause.

“Yes.”

“I am.”

“I didn’t know you were going to Europe.”

“I didn’t tell anyone. I wanted to do it without everyone having an opinion.”

“I’m sorry about Christmas,” he said.

“I know.”

“I didn’t know you wanted to do things like this.”

“I didn’t know either.”

He was quiet.

“Dad would have liked it,” I said.

“He always told me I spent too much time taking care of everyone else.”

“He was right.”

“Yes.”

Mark laughed.

I had not heard him laugh in a while.

On the tenth day, Patricia and I walked through the Swiss Alps.

“What are you going to do when you get back?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“With your life. Are you going back to the way it was?”

I thought about the house.

“No,” I said.

“What will you do instead?”

“I don’t know yet. But things are going to be different.”

She nodded.

“I started over at sixty-eight,” she said. “I thought it was too late. It wasn’t.”

“What did you start?”

“Saying yes.”

“To what?”

“To trips. Conversations with strangers. Learning things I didn’t need to learn. Being interested in the world instead of useful to one specific part of it.”

I looked at the mountains.

“That’s exactly what I’ve been doing,” I said.

“It’s not enough,” she said.

“No.”

“It was never going to be enough. Not for us.”

I understood what she meant.

Women like us had spent decades organizing our lives around everyone else’s needs.

“I’m going to travel more,” I said.

“Good.”

“I’m going to call people instead of waiting for them to call me.”

“Good.”

“And I’m going to stop decorating for Christmas unless I want to.”

She smiled.

“You love decorating.”

“I do. But I’m going to do it for myself, not as an offering to people who may or may not show up.”

“That’s a meaningful distinction.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve only just understood it.”

I returned home twelve days later.

The house was exactly as I had left it.

The tree.

The decorations.

The quiet.

But I was different.

I put the four new ornaments on the tree: the glass globe from Rothenburg, the bear from Salzburg, the cowbell from Innsbruck, and the paper star from Lucerne.

Then I called Mark.

“Come to dinner next Saturday,” I said. “I’ll make the pie.”

“Mom, you don’t have to.”

“I know. I want to.”

That night, I opened my computer.

Patricia had emailed me.

Subject: Next one?

She had sent three tours: Portugal, the Greek islands, and Scotland.

I opened them.

I replied:

Scotland. Spring. Let’s do it.

She answered ten minutes later.

Booking now.

This time my hands didn’t shake.

This time I knew exactly what I was doing.

I was giving myself permission.

Paul had always told me I took care of everyone else.

I had been waiting for someone to give me permission to do otherwise.

Nobody was going to.

I had to give it to myself.

The following Saturday, Mark and Hannah arrived for dinner.

Hannah noticed the glass globe.

“Where did you get this?”

“Rothenburg.”

“It’s so fragile.”

“I carried it in my hand luggage.”

She looked at the tree.

“I’m glad you went,” she said.

I looked at her.

“I know I—”

“Hannah.”

She stopped.

“It’s all right.”

“It isn’t,” she said. “I handled Christmas badly.”

“It was the thing that made me go. So in a way, I’m grateful.”

She looked at me.

“You’re more gracious than I deserve.”

“Probably,” I said.

She laughed.

It was the first time I had heard Hannah laugh without being polite.

We ate dinner.

She asked about the trip because she genuinely wanted to know.

Eventually she said, “I’m sorry, Linda.”

It was the first time she had called me Linda in years.

“I know,” I said.

“I was thinking about logistics and not about you.”

“Yes.”

“I’d like to do better.”

“I’d like that too.”

“What would better look like?”

“Including me,” I said. “Not as a logistical consideration, but as a person you want to see.”

She nodded.

“Okay.”

After dinner, I showed them the photographs.

When we reached the picture from Lucerne, Mark stared at it.

“That’s the photo that started everything.”

“How?”

“Everyone saw it and said, ‘Look at Linda.’”

I smiled.

“Look at Linda.”

“You looked so alive,” he said.

“I was.”

He looked at the photograph.

“I didn’t realize how much of that was missing.”

“I didn’t either,” I said.

After they left, I sat at the kitchen table with my tea.

The house was quiet.

But it was a different kind of quiet.

Before Europe, the quiet had been absence.

Now it was presence.

I was here because I had chosen to be here.

If I wanted company, I could find it.

If I wanted quiet, I could have it.

Both were possible.

I opened my journal.

I wrote about dinner.

About Hannah calling me Linda.

About Patricia and our trip to Scotland.

About how Mark had said I looked alive.

Then I thought about Paul.

His grandparents had come from Scotland to Ohio many years ago.

Now I was going there.

They had crossed an ocean.

I would take a train.

Everything was connected.

I was building something new.

Something smaller.

But something that was mine.

The journal was mine.

The ornaments were mine.

The friendship with Patricia was mine.

The trip was mine.

The life was mine.

I was sixty-seven years old.

I had twelve days of Europe in my journal, four new ornaments on my tree, a friend booking a trip through Scotland, and a son coming to dinner.

I had everything I needed.

I had permission.

I had always had it.

I had just needed to be left home for Christmas to find it.

Sometimes the thing that hurts you gives you the thing you needed.

The quiet house.

The old suitcase.

The mountains.

Patricia.

The glass globe, carried home unbroken.

The journal filling with new pages.

The permission, finally given.

I thought of Paul.

“I’m going,” I said quietly.

I could almost hear his voice.

I told you so.

“Yes,” I whispered.

“You did.”

I smiled.

Scotland in April.

I was going.

Better late than never.

Paul had always said that.

He was right.

I love you.

I’m going.

And for the first time in eight years, I was not waiting for someone else to give me permission.

Linda Dawson, alive.

That was everything.