Greece is sun and seas – air and light. Summer in Patmos feels more like Disneyland than reality – a magic place that's almost hard to believe is real. Friendly and safe, convenient and easy, beautiful every which way you look. The food is delicious, the meals long, the moonlight sparkles on the water, the sea smooth, the air embracing. Patmos is ideal. It's why Emily and I fell in love with Patmos back when we were very much in love with each other – and why we brought Sennen at 15 months old, and our entire family for the summer of 2019.
But what happens when the seas of life aren't as calm, smooth and gentle as the beaches of Patmos?
Greek mythology tells us that this magic place isn't without its problems. Zeus' rage brought thunderbolts down from the heavens and Poseidon wrath disturbed the seas – turning them into death traps. In fact, humans lived at the mercy of the gods and divine whims, personalities and idosyncracies could leave the human race reeling. No place and no one's life is perfect.
This is my fourth travel blog: one of Emily and my travel during our first year of marriage, one for our travels with our family, a third less distributed one for the time I spent on Patmos during our trial separation. And now this blog – the continuation of travels in a post-marriage life.
Over the first two blogs, I purposely omitted any challenges that existed in our marriage of family. In the first blog, I wanted to document what it was like for us as a couple to traverse the world together for a year. I did – but with some conspicuous edits. We had a great time and overall, it was an amazing, positive experience. Of course, spending 12 solid months together everyday, there were disagreements and fights. Most of them were minor, products of too much time together or the negotiation of different ways to do things. Others were more serious and were important clues about what we needed to figure out for ourselves.
But the important thing is that I that I kept the focus geared toward what we wanted our parents and friends to read.
As one of my favorite yoga teachers, Brenda Shearer says, "Life is messy." It helps to acknowledge this and own, if not embrace the mess. Right now, our lives are messy.
In the background, behind all of this amazingness, a divorce is quietly raging. Unfinished issues linger – becoming more narrow, but more toxic as time passes. Every time I read a lawyer's letter, my day is ruined. It's like being fed a spoonful of poison and told to carry on.
I like to think Emily and I shield our children from as much as possible. For as much as we ardently disagree in some areas, I think we are very much in sync in keeping our problems as far as possible from the kids.
Nonetheless, they have issues of divorce that no one can shield them from. For example, getting only half their life at a time, for example. Patmos with Daddy, not mommy. Concerts in the Park with Mommy, not Daddy. Actual birthdays with Daddy, the day of their birthday parties with Mommy. It must be like ordering a pesto fettuccine and being told you can have either a bite of noodles or a bite of pesto – but never the whole thing.
Or as Donna Summer so aptly put it, "Someone left the cake out in the rain…."
Ailyn struggles with the change more than Sennen and this trip has many moments of Ailyn marking the change. She wishes mommy could come too. She can't go to Chokolkas Beach for sunset unless we sit toward the left side of the beach, not the right as we did in 2019. Today she said, "For my next birthday I want to have all my friends and family come here to Patmos and celebrate together – and have a big party on our roof!" A very cool idea in theory.
How do you explain to your child that some things break and can't be repaired? That some fractures run too deep? There will never be Patmos the way we knew it in 2019. We are on a new Patmos. Sure, the sun feels the same, the water is as refreshing and the food as tasty. But the flavor of the whole thing is different.
Sometimes I wonder if maybe it would be nicer for them to simply not return to Patmos. Maybe Patmos is over – it can't be for us anymore.
Then I think that's not the lesson I want to teach. Sometimes we have to deal with change – painful change. Sometimes we deal with it in place. Over time, places and settings take on new and different meanings. Significances change. There's no need to throw the Patmos out with the divorce-water.
Maybe it's not completely fair that it's my decision on whether Patmos continues to be part of their lives. I certainly don't want to cause the kids any undue pain. My hope is that Patmos brings them continued, if not increased meaning. It's a wonderful place which would be sad to lose – and it will continue as a constant in their lives, continuing to nurture them – acting as a backdrop to the critical years ahead.
Two days ago, as we were leaving Petra Beach we saw a wedding beginning. It was simple, yet gorgeous. The logistics were almost painful to think about – if you saw the road there, you'd understand. But the reason they chose Petra was undeniable – it would be a stunning place to get married.
I wondered if it might have been more than that. Perhaps either the bride or groom grew up or spent summers here. Maybe they fell in love here. They could have been like Emily and me who came as a couple and fell under the island's spell.
It's unlikely and perhaps not the right thing for several reasons, but in my daydreams, I wonder if my kids might one day find their own connections to Patmos strong enough to at least want a wedding on Patmos. That Patmos might be a place of safety, beauty and good memories that seeps into their DNA and leaves them compelled to bring a future spouse to visit and even to consider for a moment braving the logistical nightmare of bringing 100 guests down the one-lane road to Petra to a flowing white chuppah set against the radiant blue sea.
"What's the best part of Patmos so far?" I asked Ailyn
"The beach!"
"What's the hardest part of Patmos so far?"
"Our house!"
"I don't think our house is so bad…."
"Our house is great! Everything here is great! I just imagined our house would need a few little things. Our house needs all new furniture. We're starting all over! Later I'll finish drawing my vision for the house."
Maybe, this is the pivot. We take what was ours – as in the four of us plus Matheus, our then au pair – and we make it ours – as in the three of us. Instead of staying in someone's Airbnb home for the summer, we will create our home that we'll sometimes Airbnb to others. If we're lucky, if I get it right, we'll create something new in a place that has always meant something to us. And because the three of us all walked in on Day One, we can create this new meaning together.
I'm not yet at a place where I can honestly say I'm not sad for all the things that are no more. I don't pretend that my kids aren't in pain at times – that there isn't real struggle. There certainly is. But we're past the point where that can be prevented. That train has left the station.
There is only the path forward. I can only wind up the leftover items of the divorce and build a life for me and my kids as best as I possibly can. Emily wants that life centered around home in Westlake Village. I want something more – something else with a different set of values and lessons. Maybe it will only be five weeks of the year we can all three be here – but those count. Those five weeks a year can have meaning and be the something from which we can all three thrive together.
And who knows where it goes from there?
In the meantime, we'll talk about the fact that it feels sad not to be able to have everyone we love together all at once. We'll go to the left side of Chokolakis Beach for sunset. We'll FaceTime friends and family when we feel the need to connect. We will be honest with each other that even in the best of places and circumstances a sunny day isn't always sunny. And that's okay. But there's always the potential for a sunnier one down the line.
One day, my kids will know I have shed as many tears writing these blogs across the years as I have worn smiles – and either way, I keep writing.
