The Mom Who Told Her Son to Get Lost and Why It Worked

“I want to go, but it’s not like we’re friends or anything. What if I hate it? What if I get there and I’m just bored and…alone?” he said. Not loud. Just quiet, like maybe if he didn’t give the words too much power, they might disappear. He stared at the table, not at me - the way you do when you wish someone would let you off the hook.I sat in the garden across from my 19-year-old son, talking about backpacking through Europe, first on his own, and then halfway through meeting up with a family friend’s son he had known his whole life and yet, in many ways, barely knew. It’s not as if he had never travelled without us before. But this time was different. This time he would be truly alone, no friends, no familiar faces, just unfamiliar places and possibility. I wanted him to see it through my lens: new cities, long train rides, cafés, late nights surrounded by other young travellers learning life one day at a time, crooked streets that lead everywhere and nowhere, the kind of stories that don’t just happen, they’re lived.  And yet, the pull of the unknown wasn’t enough to...