travel – Unusual & Endlessly Interesting

I’m not sure I understood what people meant when they expressed that something was “healing their inner child” until yesterday. Rich and I are on a cruise from Tampa to Panama. Last evening while waiting for our 8:30pm dinner time (which feels basically like midnight because we are old people now) we participated in the newer trivia game they hold, where you use your phone to ring in answers. (Side note, I won. I maintain this is more about technique and not wasting time looking at the screen when you can just read the question on your phone.) Immediately following trivia was family karaoke. Rich was dorking around downloading pictures and trying to post some, so we continued to sit there.

The first person up was a 4 year old girl who was going to sing Party in the USA. She bravely stood up at that microphone and her parents and baby brother were in the front row of the lounge cheering her on. The little girl tripped (understandably) over the words in the intro, but when she hit the chorus she was belting out loud and her parents were on their feet waving hands side to side. There were only about 15 other people in the lounge, including us, but you best believe everyone in there was waving their hands. And her mom is filming her and her dad is dancing with the baby brother and each time she belts the chorus the whole room is waving their hands and the parents are letting her own it and celebrating it.

And suddenly I have tears running down my face and I get it. Watching these parents hear their daughter, find a way to let her do her thing, and be supportive…is that all I wanted?

I have a generally firm rule with therapists about not “exploring my childhood.” My current therapist has blurred that line more than anyone else with middling success. But I can’t wait to tell her about this. I didn’t need someone to tell me I was the best singer, or help making this a career, but seeing that some of this outgoing-ness could be channeled and, I keep coming back to these words, seen or celebrated. Yup, this is our daughter and she has different tastes or hobbies than we expected, but I can sit in the front row and wave my hands and she’ll know we support her. I have to balance this with the fact that I did follow paths not like my family. They did show up to theater performances I was in, they did let me paint my bedroom blue with puffy clouds, they did let me move to Disney for an internship. But it seems like all of this was tolerated or explained away. (Again, I certainly did not have a bad childhood, which might be why I don’t want to get into it with therapists. It was good, in some ways above average, I imagine. I like my family, etc.)

Anyway, I don’t know how to explain this, but I know watching this 4 year old belt out Party in the USA with her parents and all having their hands up cracked something inside of me. And now, it becomes part of the self-examined life I try to live.

Let’s do some Australia recapping, shall we?

We left Friday and arrived to Melbourne on Sunday morning. Rich and I got in a few hours sooner than the rest of our group, so we made our way to the house and then headed out to the cafe I posted pictures of for breakfast. We rested until the rest of the group got here and then once everyone was freshened up we headed to a gastro pub type place for lunch. I had a Fizzer, which is a really light cider type beer. They asked if I wanted ice in it, which is new to me and ciders, but when in Oz. We decided to take a walk towards where the tennis stadiums are and get the lay of the land. We were going to pivot into the Royal Botannical gardens and take in the views and just chill.

Of course, I am not quite chill. And I had not adjusted to vacation mode with others yet. It will take another day or two from this point to get into this mode. I had done so much work to get us here from a planning perspective, that a little directional help from others would have been welcome. So, for now, I remain a little uptight, a little unsure of where we are or what day it is, and a little annoyed.

We decide from there that we want to try this pizza place that was voted as the top in Melbourne, and one of the top in the world for dinner that night. We make the reservation for 8pm and everyone takes naps in the meantime. Pizza was delicious (it’s the 48 hour cold fermentation! Must remember to make doughs more in advance at home.) and we saw the South Yarra neighborhood, which looked very hip.

Monday was downtown day. We trammed into the Flinder’s Street Station, which is the building on much of Melbourne’s City Guides and promotional materials when you’re looking up Melbourne. We started with an alleyway breakfast (which was very good), and then wandered through some of the old arcades. These are buildings built in the late 1890’s during the Australian Gold Rush and are now eclectic little shopping malls. We poked around and then made our way to the State Library of Victoria. From there we grabbed the city center tram and Rex, Rich and I decided to go to this kooky art exhibit I had read about and Jenna and Shawn decided to do a full loop on the city loop tram. The art exhibit was absolutely wackadoodle, which I loved. Some highlights:

Banana taped to a wall with duct tape that the artists insists is changed out every 7 – 10 days and it’s a commentary on interacting with art.
A video installation of a woman interpreting all the emojis in photographs
Sculpture of birds on a tree
Sculpture of old furniture legs turned into a piece that looks like a fallen tree as a memorandum on how we just discarded furniture that the tree gave it’s life for
Super bizarre animated video screens decrying commercialism and immorality

Lifetime of memories, right there. After that we met back up for lunch along the river and then back to apartment to rest / be done for the rest of the day it turns out.

Tuesday was the Australian Open Day! Rich has a goal to attend the four Grand Slam tournaments: AO, Wimbledon, US Open and French Open. The whole group got seats for the afternoon session and Rich and Rex added on the evening session. I love a festive atmosphere and getting to the Open grounds was so fun. We got there right when it opened, got free seat cushions and sunscreen, meet the most wonderful volunteer Kathleen who oriented us to the spaces and courts available. We went shopping immediately so Rich could get his pick of merch. He’s not a jump up and down squealing kind of guy, but I’m pretty sure he was on Cloud 9. We got lunch and drinks and then made our way to the court for the noon match, which was the number one woman in the world, playing an American who has previously won the tournament. It is by far the most tennis I’ve watched and Jenna summed it up well that all sports are so much better live. I’ve tried to watch tennis on TV. I find it boring. I also don’t understand the scoring which makes it hard to follow. Rich had given me a lesson I paid attention to earlier in the day and I was ready to be at the AO.

Our first match was the number one ranked woman against American Sophia Kenin who won this championship in 2020, but has not played much in the last few years. It was a great match to watch to introduce myself to live tennis. Rich was a great sport when we had questions. It’s a quieter sport with almost no down time. The second match we had tickets to was a young Danish player vs Yoshi, a fast and more experienced player. It was really exciting (even if I find tennis matches go on a little long) and we were sad Yoshi didn’t beat the kid, but the kid did win more gracefully than he played.

The AO grounds become THE place to be after work and as we were leaving people were streaming in to just chill in the party atmosphere. Rich and Rex were sticking around for the evening session, so Jenna, Shawn and I ended up walking back to the house due to delays on the tram system and being READY to be done. We picked up poke bowls on the way back for dinner and ate at the house.

As an aside from the chronological review, it turns out my patience can be thin even with the closest of friends when I feel annoyed. Working on it.

Anyway – there are the recaps of full days 1 and 2 in Melbourne!