Tickets, Teabags, and Well-Behaved Tourists

I had two round-trip, non-stop tickets to England and one eager daughter I nearly bailed on. I bought the tickets after Music Man announced a string of shows in Europe. At that point, I’d take any excuse to cart my children across the world in the name of music. It was my version of freedom—one-on-one time disguised as cultural enrichment, or maybe the other way around.

The year before, I’d launched the Make Live Music Matter to Gen Z campaign. Each kid got to pick one dream artist, and I’d take them to their first real show of their choosing. Onalee chose Bruno Mars in Vegas. Sayre went for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. And KJ—my sonically sensitive minimalist—refused on principle. I tried every angle, even offered up Imagine Dragons, knowing we’d both be miserable but at least he’d recognize the songs. In the end, he chose The Garfield Movie.

After spending hundreds of dollars to stand in front of a pajama-clad Brunomaniac screaming marriage proposals all night—followed by partial hearing loss from Flea-side seats in Indianapolis, where I had to beg a food vendor for paper towels to stuff in Sayre’s ears—I started to think KJ might’ve had the right idea. But I wasn’t giving up; I was realizing I’d given them too much choice in the matter.

I started my do-over with Onalee. She was finally old enough for a proper front-row, rock-and-roll baptism, and Europe felt like the perfect stage—smaller venue, fewer suburban dads in tour merch. She agreed, and after I promised Indian curry and afternoon tea, she was genuinely thrilled. Turns out food is the ultimate hook for Gen Z, and I was happy to comply if it meant a willing partner to fly across the Atlantic and stand front row with me—all while graciously pretending it was a mother-daughter milestone.

But butter chicken and crustless sandwiches come at a price. For her, it was preparation. “Get studying, little lady,” I said as I shared a Music Man 101 playlist—perfectly curated for an eighth-grader with a Stanley: more sugar, less sin; fewer banjos altogether. “Squat up,” I commanded, explaining the physical demands of a rail-riding experience. We were not going to be the mother-daughter duo who made it to the front only to surrender halfway through his marathon set.

And then, somewhere between bladder-strengthening drills and song analysis, I fell into those rabbit holes and forgot all about the trip—until a plasmoid-adjacent Malaysian Airlines thread reminded me of our upcoming flight. For a time, I considered canceling, convinced that boarding a plane would present a statistically significant increase in my risk of entering a wormhole I hadn’t consented to.

That was until Kelli, my spin instructor, reminded me she needed my birthday-ride playlist—one of the few remaining perks of turning another year older. Music Man featured prominently, my subtle attempt to help fellow spinners see the light. They barely noticed, but I was reactivated. Once again, his music got the best of me, and before I knew it, fear had turned to frenzy—anticipation building so fast I ordered custom shirts, paying twice their cost in shipping just to be sure they’d arrive before takeoff.

Even amid obsessive tracking of our shirts’ shipping status and unsolicited lectures on the brilliance of Music Man’s cohesive artistic arc, my enchantment with the esoteric hadn’t gone completely extinct. I decided we’d tag on a Great-Pyramid-adjacent Stonehenge detour, hoping to feel a piece of the megalithic energy network firsthand.

When our red-eye touched down, Onalee and I stumbled off the plane—bleary, hollow-eyed, and half-assembled. She had jet lag; I had the quiet betrayal of adulthood—strung out without a story to tell. Fear not: I had a plan. I’d discovered the genius of mobile recovery the year before in Dublin—three kids splayed across the back of a Big Bus while I sat up front, red earbuds in, absorbing Irish history I’d forget by morning. This time, a train bound for Salisbury would serve as our makeshift motel. Win-win.

We didn’t. Our bodies begged for rest but wouldn’t cooperate—time-zone travel’s favorite joke. We rode half-conscious through the English countryside, eyes gritty, heads lolling—mouths dry as carry-ons left in the sun.

British-bred curation got us back on track. By the time we reached the welcome center, something had shifted. The sun came out, and the choreography of the place took over—the tidy signage, the glassed-in café, the shuttle loading with quiet efficiency. I was right back in the fantasy I’d built from those reels at home: walking among the stones, standing in the center, absorbing the field, worshiping the sacrifice, performing the whatever-it-was.

But even transcendence comes with logistics. Being posh and reverent, there’s no drop-you-at-the-front option; a short walk is required—presumably to thin out the fanny-pack contingent and give everyone time to compose themselves before the sacred-stones selfie. The path winds through a postcard of rolling green and scattered sheep, silence so polite you can almost believe you’re on a secular procession—the professional set’s version of the Hajj, complete with morning mist and a gift shop at the end.

And then you arrive. The crowd gathers at a respectful distance, held back by a rope so modest it feels more symbolic than functional. No guards, no real barrier—just the quiet pressure of collective etiquette. Everyone stands there: Obedient. Solemn. Quietly disappointed.

Somewhere in that hush, it hit me—I had no idea what I was searching for, or why I thought a trek to see a pile of stones might deliver a lightning strike of meaning. Maybe it was the residue of a life spent chasing significance and airline status in the same breath: book the flight, pack the journal, call it growth. I’ve inhaled the vortex in Sedona, hyperventilated on Chilean mountaintops, and now found myself staring blankly at a ring of rocks in southwest England—where, despite my best intentions, the gift shop held my Starseed attention span longer than the stones. Still, true to form, we self-snapped a photo—proof we’d completed the sacred circuit, sufficient evidence for social validation and future small talk alike.

On the ride back, my post–red-eye genius plan finally caught up with me. A train car turned hotel room only works if you remember to set an alarm for your transfer. I didn’t. After twenty-four hours without sleep, Onalee and I crashed. When I finally came to, we were nearly in northwest France—one stop shy of the Channel. We stumbled off the train, glassy-eyed and spinning, trying to remember which way was up—never mind east or west. Onalee stared at me. What now?

I felt that familiar pang of independence turning on itself. I loved being the capable one—responsible, not so much. I sighed, realizing no one was coming to find me a bench, hand me a latte, or point—without hesitation—toward the sign for the train that would take me in the right direction.

We located the ticket booth and I pled our case. I didn’t want to pay for another two tickets—that would’ve completely undermined my train-turned-hotel masterpiece. Economical defeat, at that point in my life, still felt like moral failure. The agent was kind but said my fate was in the conductor’s hands. Then he pointed to the train that would take us east.

The only open seats were across from three men who looked like they’d been there since dawn—beer in hand, laughter loud, faces flushed from either sun or spirits—and not the kind you find at Stonehenge. They were younger, just shy of thirty maybe, with stories I’m sure could make late-night radio blush. I parked Onalee beside me and tried not to let the disappointment show—knowing full well they weren’t about to adjust a thing for a middle-aged woman and her daughter. I’d been around long enough to understand that presence alone doesn’t rewrite the script.

Still, if I couldn’t have peace, I could at least have entertainment. When I noticed the conductor never checked tickets for anyone who looked asleep, I decided to kill two birds with one stone: dodge another fare and half-listen to their rotating saga—pretending, of course, that I wasn’t enjoying a word of it, or quietly allowing it to play out in front of my teenage daughter.

Onalee, who has inherited my ability to pick up a frequency without a syllable being spoken, read my face and closed her eyes too.

By the time we reached our stop, their aluminum pyramid was nearly complete. They’d decided we were visiting from L.A.—consensus landing on Gwyneth and Apple—and I silently prayed Onalee wouldn’t ask what “tea bagging” meant, or if it might be arriving on the menu with scones tomorrow.

No sooner were those boys out of earshot than the question came. She’s Steph 2.0, after all—new and improved, but still dangerously curious. I told her. Not the cinematic version—just enough to keep the world from teaching her first. Fourteen felt old enough to know, but young enough to need it from someone who understood the difference between humor and humiliation: a woman who could land a punchline with more soul than the noise we’d just been trapped in. Maybe she’d learn sooner than I did that keeping the peace isn’t worth laughing at stories that were never really funny in the first place—especially when you’ve been written into the plot and allowed it to be sold back to you as fiction.

And that was that. We exited to the platform, somewhere between childhood and whatever comes next—both a little more aware that it’s the unplanned detour that usually delivers the sacred lesson.