I never traveled alone with my mother. I couldn’t have imagined it. A river of judgment, fed by my belief that her world was too distant to ever bridge, flowed through my mind, a current too strong to let her cross the Rubicon guarding my heart, fearing it would tear my world apart. 

Yet here I am, years later, savouring Paris, Malta, and Portugal with my youngest daughter—the sights, the people, the special moments, the delicious food and wine. An amazing time.

Perhaps my mother saw the world through a veil of omnipresent dangers. Or maybe, sensing my perceived recklessness, she feared my stumbles and falls, feeling helpless to stop them. It could also be that, feeling my aversion to her way of being in the world, she kept her distance, believing it the only way to shield her own vulnerable heart.

Like my mother, I built walls to separate us. Over the years, they grew as formidable as the old gates of Valetta, designed to withstand any onslaught, to shelter those behind them. Fortified, proud, defiant of invaders, they stood the test of dangerous arms and passing time.

In the old city of Valetta, the Knights of St. John erected a monumental gate to deny Suleiman’s Ottoman Empire access to their fortress. In the 15th century, that gate, its wide ditch, and high walls were vital to the city’s defense. Today, the walls stand as a testament to the past, but the gates are gone. Only two tall, slender metal poles, their parallel arms echoing archery bows, mark the beautiful sandstone entrance to the walled city.

I never dismantled my walls with my mother. But somewhere in my fifties, I did learn to stop shooting words meant to pierce her heart like an arrow.

Time changes everything—the past, the future, even people. Traveling with my daughter, there are no arrow-sharp words, no need to close the gate to my heart.

It is a beautiful thing. A gift, this time on foreign soil with the woman I once held in my arms, dreading the day I’d release her into the world for fear she would fall. Over the years, she and her sister taught me to keep my heart undefended. That I have nothing to fear when I keep it open to the love that holds us, secure and safe, in our family circle—a circle connecting us through the ages to my mother, her mother, and all the mothers before her, and all the mothers to come, whose arms circle the ones they love to keep them safe from harm