Even though it was only 10 days, the trip to London this summer occupies most of the summer for me. I can’t shake it from my mind. The poet Thomas Moore expresses a similar feeling in these lines: Go where we may. Rest where we will. Eternal London haunts us still.
The vast city has occupied a generous part of my mind for twenty years. When I am gone from it for years at a time I begin to wonder if it’s really all that it’s cracked up to be. I start to feel a little sheepish about my infatuation with it. These feelings grew stronger as our departure date inched closer on the calendar because it’s a big deal to bring your kids across the ocean to a mythical, but very real city, that they have heard about their entire lives, let alone being named after.
I wanted so badly for my kids to love London, for the cost to feel justified, for the city to instantly sweep them off their feet as it did to me. I wanted them to feel, see, hear, and to even smell the chaos of it all and to see what happens next.
What happened next was everything to me. My hesitancy about the trip washed away. London took me again in its encompassing embrace and I got to watch the wonders of the city reflected on my kids’ faces. It was worth more than we paid.
My eldest, London (12), was attentive to every detail from properly using her Oyster card to describing Paul Delaroche’s painting, The Execution of Lady Jane Grey, in the National Gallery (as we walked there). Camden (8) was infatuated with the buses, trains, boats, and the giant jets arcing over us on their approach to Heathrow. In rooms that housed the Rosetta Stone and van Gogh’s Sunflowers, he was more interested in driving his British-themed scooter across the floor, but this was not at all surprising; his complete lack of interest in art museums being a long-established character trait.
For eight days we moved through London like pros, trying to see as much as feasible, but at a pace that allowed for Camden to eat a chocolate croissant from nearly every Pret A Manger we saw and for me to consume a tasty pint in as many pubs and attractions as possible.
When it was time to catch that last train to Heathrow and none of us wanted to leave I felt a sense of accomplishment. This was the goal. Show them London. Fall in love with it all over again. Mourn our departure. Insist we go back. And to feel deep down in our bones the truth in Samuel Johnson’s quip, “When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.”
“London goes beyond any boundary or convention. It contains every wish or word ever spoken, every action or gesture ever made, every harsh or noble statement ever expressed. It is illimitable. It is infinite London.” – Peter Ackroyd, London: The Biography
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