1
Akemi
It was a steamy morning in Thailand, and Akemi breathed deep when she stepped into the air-conditioned sanctuary of her little rented apartment. She’d taken Kaleo to the nearest park before the sun got too high, but the walk home had been long and hot.
For most of her life, Akemi had been a tireless traveler. Lately, though, she was gritty-eyed with exhaustion.
They’d had a rough night – teething again – and as much as she wanted to collapse onto the bed and fall asleep, her gnawing hunger was an even stronger force than her exhaustion.
The kitchen was not at all childproofed, so cooking felt out of the question – but luckily, the fridge contained more than enough leftovers to keep herself fed. Travel blog research on a tight schedule often meant ordering half the menu whenever she went someplace new and then boxing up most of the food to take home.
‘Home’ being wherever they were sleeping that night.
Lately, she woke up not even knowing what country she was in.
Each morning, it took a minute to reorient herself.
That never used to happen before.
She cobbled together a meal with Kaleo on her hip, then ate on the bathroom floor while he splashed himself clean in the tub. The fish and rice was cold and congealed, but there were so many hot peppers in the dish that she hardly noticed. Her mouth was on fire by the time she finished.
They were in Bangkok for the week, researching an article on the best spots in the city to visit with a toddler.
Her list was made up of indoor playgrounds, mostly, to take advantage of the air conditioning. She was pulling together a list of parks, too; she liked to start their days outside while the city was relatively cool. And Kaleo had loved the aquarium so much that she might try to fit in a second visit.
It was fun, exploring with her little sidekick.
Or… it would be, if she weren’t so exhausted.
Parenting was the same wherever she went, but navigating new neighborhoods on top of the daily demands of motherhood was turning out to be more difficult than she had anticipated.
Akemi was in desperate need of a break. If she could just hand her baby off to his dad for a few minutes… but no. She had to go it alone, and not even due to circumstances beyond her control.
She was alone in Bangkok with her toddler thanks to her own stubbornness… and the insatiable wanderlust that always crept up on her sooner or later.
For her entire fourth trimester, Akemi had lived at home with her mother. She took it slow, adjusted to motherhood, and enjoyed spending time in Pualena with her family. Between the support of her sisters and their idyllic island home, taking care of Kaleo had felt as easy as breathing.
After those first three months, she started to feel restlessagain. Her mother’s constant suggestions started to feel more suffocating than helpful, and her Hawaii content was getting stale. She needed to switch it up.
They had started with a trip to Italy, and the long travel day they spent getting to the other side of the world was amazingly smooth and easy. It had been the same cycle of nursing and sleeping as usual, just on a plane.
Then, Italy had felt much the same as Hawaii in the sense that she was surrounded by family support and good food, a combo that made motherhood feel easy.
She had a village in both places… and parenting with that degree of support had pumped up her ego. She read all the books, had all the answers, and after a while – just like back home in Pualena – the family compound (and strong opinions from Lorenzo’s mother) started to feel more like a cage than a support system.
Akemi and Kaleo stayed in Tuscany for three full months – which, for her, was a very long time to stay anywhere. She created content for her social media by wandering the streets of Florence with her baby napping in a sling, and she took more and more day trips to other Italian towns to write more articles for her travel blog.
Throughout those months, her relationship with Lorenzo had felt more like coparenting than romance – which was fine, because parenting and work was all she had energy for anyhow.
All of their conversations revolved around Kaleo. Lorenzo had given Akemi her own bedroom, and they traded off with the baby so that they could both get uninterrupted sleep.
Their romantic relationship – or lack thereof – puzzled both sides of the family, but Akemi was content with it.
Mostly.
If there was an occasional niggling worry – or a desire for more lurking somewhere beneath the surface of their everyday conversations – she was quick to put it out of her mind.
Their coparenting relationship was so placid and peaceful that she didn’t want to rock the boat. Maybe Lorenzo felt the same way… or maybe he had just lost interest in her when her belly ballooned past watermelon size and she became a perpetual milk machine.
