Why You Should Travel With Your Grandmother Right Now

December 7th, 2001, a day that has become known as Ben & Jerry’s Day in my family, is the day we lost my paternal grandmother. My family is from Vermont and my grandma absolutely loved food, so every December 7th without fail, my dad and I celebrate her memory with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s (each).

I grew up in California, about 3,000 miles from my extended family in New England. We traveled to Vermont every couple of years to visit with grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles, but none of those people were present in my life beyond those moments and memories. It’s not easy living that far apart and not having the means to get together often. Being with lots of family members wasn’t something I was used to; it wasn’t something I knew how to miss in my life, even though I recognized it as a special thing in my friends’ lives.

I didn’t know I missed it until December 7th, 2001.

Losing my grandma was the first time I started to feel regret. I am so much like my dad, and according to my parents, he is so much like his mom, yet I barely got to know who she was.

One thing I did know was that I had a second chance, in a sense, even if it wasn’t with the same person. My maternal grandmother is still alive and well, and in recent years I’ve made more of an effort to get to know her.

This June, I had an invitation to join my mom and grandma (we call her Granny) on a girls trip, in a rented RV, through Northern California for a week. The entire trip was planned and paid for, all I had to do was show up (an unusual situation for this world traveler). So I did what any starving, budget traveler would do: I showed up.

This was the most quality time (and in closest quarters) that I’ve ever spent with my grandmother, and it was almost like stepping into a time machine. I am more like her than I ever realized, and I think if she was born in my generation, she would be me.

She is a retired professional photographer and a writer at heart, like someone else I know. She published her first book at age 80, the same year I published mine. She is an entrepreneur, despite the struggles it took to be one in her generation. She was born in England and lived in Switzerland at a young age. She used to be fully bilingual in English and French. She is a world traveler, even now in her eighties, visiting different countries in Europe every year. She is a storyteller, like all grandmothers should be, and I let her talk.

One night in the RV, while drinking wine at a campsite in the eastern Sierras, I got out my laptop, opened up the audio recorder, and started asking her questions. We went as far back as my great-great grandfather Jack Danson to discover where the wanderlust gene came from in our family. She told me about his journeys to India, South Africa, and everywhere in between, following his traveling heart to jobs all over the world until the day he died.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to take notes, because she is in the process of editing her second book, which is all about our family history. I’ve already started reading the drafts and am especially drawn to the chapter about my great-great grandfather, “Jacks Are Wild,” (can’t imagine why).

Related: Generations of Wanderlust: A Conversation with My 82-Year-Old Grandmother (PODCAST)

That was the last night of our trip, and it couldn’t have ended on a better note. There we were, three girls in the woods, bonding over wine and chocolate life and family history. Not only did we resurrect the past with our conversations full of memories, but got to know each other as we are in the present, and we created new memories on the spot that we can recall in the future, anytime we want, even when we’re thousands of miles apart.

We’ve discovered a relationship that could have been there all along, and we’re nurturing it. I taught Granny how to use Instagram, and now she follows my adventures and interacts with me all over the world at the touch of a screen. She has an iPhone, so we can text each other, and I even taught her how to use Voxer, so we can actually talk to each other even when I’m overseas.

I wish I could have done the same with my other grandma. I would have loved to have spent quality one-on-one time with her to get to know her and talk about the things that we have in common. I would list them, but I’m not quite sure what they are, except one. Like a true Vermonter, Ben & Jerry’s ran in her blood, and it also runs in mine. Time for some ice cream.