What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding

by Kristin Newman

I began to need my trips like other people need religion.

When these moments happen, I get absurdly happy, like the kind of happy other people report experiencing during the birth of their children.

furious that I was nervous and lonely.

I’d learned that getting on a plane could make me feel better, and that, regardless of how it had gone, I was the kind of girl who sometimes hung out alone in Paris.

There was a new life coming, and it was going to be as colorful as Dutch tulip fields.

You say yes because it is the only way to really experience another place, and let it change you.

You are easygoing about sleeping/eating/comfort issues. You don’t change rooms three times, you’ll take an overnight bus if you must, you can go without meat in India and without vegan soy gluten-free tempeh butter in Bolivia, and you can shut the hell up about it.

You can figure it out. How to read a map, how to order when you can’t read the menu, how to find a bathroom, or a train, or a castle.