TERRI KAY

Travels With My Lovers by Erica Miner begins as follows:


1. Addio, Firenze

I.

I was beside myself. Admittedly, I was hopeless at maps – this had always been my husband Eric’s job – and suddenly I found myself in my first European city without a clue as to where I was heading. Although I wasn’t a single mom, it certainly felt that way, with my two tykes in tow and a husband bailing out at the last minute to stay in New York. Like a relentless mama sheepdog, I pushed and prodded my precious kids along the cracked cobblestone sidewalks. Where was the shopping cart when you needed it? Or the red wagon, for that matter? I think there comes a time in every mother's life when you just want to say, what was I thinking?

Don't get me wrong, I loved being a mom. But much as I treasured my two adorable little cohorts, I was beginning to be desperate for some exploration time alone. Julian and Regina, thank God, were not hyper kids; but they were both up for adventure and kept me going, going, going.

By mid-afternoon Florence had become, to my overloaded senses, a bewildering maze of crisscrossing streets and piazzas choked with tourists. Then, when the kids and I had finally got our bearings (I was feeling calm and we were on our way to a bar to reward ourselves with some gelati) the unimaginable happened. My son, who had insisted on chasing pigeons through the Piazza della Signoria, disappeared; and suddenly the phrase "sightseeing" took on a whole new - and frightening - meaning.

Julian was only eight - what made him think he could just take off like that, in the middle of an unfamiliar, foreign city? One minute he was alternately pursuing the ubiquitous birds and fidgeting impatiently while five-year-old Regina and I admired the imposing statues in the colonnade; and the next minute he was out of sight. Something was definitely going on with him.

He’d always seemed to be a mirrored image of his dad – “little Eric,” we sometimes called him – and I’d always thought that his affection for me reflected the genuine admiration and supportiveness that Eric always demonstrated towards me. But lately, my husband had gotten less attentive; and strangely, Julian had filled the gap, vacillating between an annoying clinginess and a fierce, unpredictable independence.

I tried to remember how I had felt at his age and suddenly flashed on the exhilarating freedom I’d felt when I had put my own mother through a similar torment. Too impatient to wait for her, I walked home alone from my urban grade school, crossing a busy, dangerous thoroughfare all by myself. When I reached home I found her, head bowed over the kitchen table, crying bitter tears of worry and grief. It was one of the few times I ever saw my mother cry. Now, I supposed, it was my turn to be fraught with anxiety over my own missing child.

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Travels With My Lovers by Erica Miner, (AuthorHouse ©2002). All rights reserved.