A Different Kind of Journey: Taking Unicorns Seriously

It turns out this is my 150th blog post since Carla and I began our “full-time” traveling a little over four years ago. Between this blog and my career, I’ve probably written close to a thousand articles, and I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed creating a piece more than this one. I found myself smiling as I tapped away at the keyboard. This post is not really about travel, at least not in the usual sense, and it’s not about any specific place we’ve been. But I still think you’ll enjoy it. So thank you for reading and following along.

Since being back in the States, I’ve already been lucky enough to spend some wonderful time with Mason and Hailee, my grandkids. That is one of the great gifts of coming home.

There are always errands, appointments, mail, and the small pile of things that seems to wait patiently for your return. But then a grandchild runs toward you, reaches for your hand, or asks you to sit on the floor, and suddenly everything else fades into the background. The floor is farther away than it used to be, but still. It’s worth the trip.

Mason is older now, and there is something wonderful about that. He is becoming more and more himself. I love being able to go places with him, have real conversations, and see what sparks his interest.

But Hailee is four, and four has its own special kind of magic.

At four, the world is still wide open. A blanket can become a castle, a stick can become a wand, and a small toy can carry an entire story inside it. The line between what is real and what is imagined has not yet been guarded too closely. There is still plenty of room for wonder.

Hailee loves unicorns. Not casually, either. She loves them in the full-hearted way a four-year-old can love something. And I understand this completely. A unicorn is already a beautiful creature, but in Hailee’s world, it can have wings, sparkles, rainbow hair, healing powers, and whatever else the moment requires.

I don’t think she spends much time wondering whether unicorns are real in the way adults mean real. For her, the unicorn belongs to beauty and magic. It makes sense because it feels true. A flying horse does not seem unreasonable at four. And honestly, I’m not sure it should seem so unreasonable at seventy-two either.

That thought moved something in me. In many ways, it’s what inspired me to write this piece. When I’m back in the States, I’m on a different kind of journey, and my grandchildren are such a big part of it. If I’m wise, I pay close attention to what they bring into my life, because I keep realizing that they touch something in me I don’t want to lose.

We often describe children as innocent, and of course they are. But I’m not sure that word is enough. It can make childhood sound like a sweet form of not knowing, as if children are beautiful mostly because they have not yet learned the harder parts of life. There is some truth in that. Children don’t yet carry the full weight of the world, and thank goodness for that. But what moves me most is not only what they have been spared. It is what they still seem able to feel so freely: wonder, delight, trust, imagination, and a kind of openness to the world that adulthood can slowly wear down.

Childhood is not only a lack of knowledge. Children know things too. They know how to enter a moment fully, how to love without needing to explain it, how to play without worrying whether play is useful, and how to believe in something simply because it makes the world feel more magical.

That is more than innocence. It is a kind of wisdom we forget to protect.

Of course, children are self-focused, as they need to be. They are forming their little egos and identities, trying to understand where they end and the world begins. This can lead to some very strong opinions about snacks, shoes, sharing, and whether bedtime is a fair arrangement.

But beneath all of that, there is something wonderfully unguarded. Children offer themselves to the world with very little armor. They laugh with their whole bodies, cry with their whole bodies, and love in a way that has not yet learned to be careful. When they want to show you something, they show you with complete seriousness. A drawing, a toy, a dance, a story, a jump off the couch - all of it matters.

And if you are lucky, you’re invited to enter their world.

The longer I live, the more I wonder if adulthood is always the great achievement we think it is. We learn necessary things, of course. We learn responsibility, patience, judgment, and how to get through a day when the world asks more of us than we feel able to give. We learn that not every dream comes true simply because we want it badly enough.

These are real lessons, and we need them.

But somewhere along the way, many of us lose more than we needed to lose. What we call realism is sometimes just disappointment that has learned how to sound sensible. What passes for maturity can be fear speaking in a serious voice. And what looks like practicality may be the slow surrender of imagination.

Children have not surrendered yet. That is why they are such good teachers. They can look at a unicorn without needing to be reasonable. They can walk into a room without first calculating all the ways joy might fail. For them, dancing does not require skill, singing does not require a good voice, and loving has not yet learned to be cautious.

Children simply begin. That may be one of the most beautiful things about them. They enter the world as if something wonderful might happen at any moment. And often, because they enter the world that way, something wonderful does happen. A cookie. A puddle. A butterfly. A pink unicorn with wings. A grandparent willing to sit on the floor and accept a very specific role in the story.

This is one of the things grandparenthood is teaching me. It is not only that I get to love Mason and Hailee, though that would be enough. It is that they remind me of parts of myself I did not mean to leave behind. They remind me that play is not the opposite of wisdom, and imagination is not an escape from reality. It is one of the ways we make reality softer and more beautiful.

Now, in my seventies, I feel especially grateful for that reminder. There is something tender about being invited back into the world of play. Not as a parent, with all the daily responsibility and exhaustion that comes with raising children, but as a grandparent, with a little more time, a little more perspective, and maybe a little more willingness to let my hair down, roll around on the floor, and take unicorns seriously.

We adults need more of that than we admit. Not because we should become childish. There is already plenty of childishness in the world, and much of it is being performed by people old enough to know better. But childlike is different. Childlike means we are still open, still curious, still willing to be delighted, and still able to imagine something better.

The soul of a child is not naive in the way we often think. It is unguarded. It has not yet been talked out of wonder. And wonder may be one of the things that can still save us.

Not wonder alone, of course. We still need responsibility, courage, kindness, and a working understanding of how bills are paid. But without wonder, life can become dry and heavy. We need the part of us that can still look at the world and say, “Isn’t that beautiful?” We need the part that still believes kindness matters, dreams matter, play matters, and love does not become less real because it is simple.

Hailee’s unicorns reminded me of this. A four-year-old girl looked at a magical flying horse and did not ask for evidence. She saw beauty and accepted the invitation.

That seems like wisdom to me.

Maybe that is one of the gifts grandchildren bring. They do not enter our lives only so we can teach them. They come carrying lessons of their own. They remind us of the world before cynicism, before imagination was treated as something to outgrow, before love learned to protect itself quite so carefully.

So yes, I am grateful.

I am grateful for Mason and Hailee, for this season of grandparenthood, and for the chance to be old enough to know how precious it is while still being young enough, most days, to get down on the floor and play.

And I am grateful for unicorns. Especially the flying ones. Because in Hailee’s world, they make perfect sense. And the more time I spend with her, the more I think they make sense in mine too.