For most of the past 11 summers, we have hosted our nephew and niece for a New York adventure.

Each time, we try to do things we’ve never done before.

We’ve gone to amusement parks, and high ropes courses. We’ve been to Broadway shows and art museums. We’ve tried cooking classes and escape rooms. Even when it’s a bad show, it’s a good time. It’s a shared adventure.

Because “the kids” are now 20 and 16, budding young adults with schedules and lives, we often don’t have the time we used to. This summer, only Shane was free. We’re expecting Nico sometime in the months to come.

We had two days, instead of five, but Lori is an inspired event planner who redeems the time, and specializes in surprises. So we got about a month’s worth of novel outings in two days, after which our nephew went back to his life, and I felt like hospitalization would not be unreasonable.

Since we always do things we’ve never done before, this year Lori threw in two wild card touristy things: a Taylor Swift walking tour, and something called The Friends Experience, basically a museum for lovers of the sit-com Friends.

In both I felt like a welcome guest in someone else’s home. These were not my tribes, but they embraced me nonetheless.

I respect the tour guide impulse. It requires expertise, affection, and generosity. You have to know a place, love it, and love people enough that you want to share it with them. Which means you have to have an authentic relationship both with the place, and for at least an hour, with the people

I did it at Amherst College. I’ve done it at Christian Cultural Center. It’s a labor of love.

This was 1.3 miles of glory, that started at NYU and ended at Swift’s house in Tribeca.

It was an encylopaediac presentation that spoke biographically, culturally, musically, historically, creatively, and philosophically for two hours, all from a man who, inexplicably, does not have a PhD in the subject.

NYU should give him one.

When I learned he was a Brooklyn schoolteacher it started to make more sense. Nothing surprised him. Nothing phased him.

I had to step away from the group for half the tour to resell some Broadway tickets on Stubhub we decided not to use. And when I rejoined, at the final destination, the exterior of Swift’s house in Tribeca, he was the same, but his guests were changed.

A German lady in the group said “Ve are all better Zvifties now, ya?”

And I’m sure they were.

The Friends Experience had less walking, and more artifacts. It was essentially a museum that contained a shocking about of trivia, alongside actual sets, furniture, wardrobe, and props from the show.

It had Ross’s couch and Phoebe’s Supergirl outfit. It had the foosball table, and Central Perk, and quite nearly anything else you could think of from the show.

And while Friends is not so much part of my present, I did find myself recalling the times and places when I first saw these shows, and appreciating the reflections on the creative process.

And I watched people of a variety of nations, powers, and tongues commemorate something that they loved.

And I think there is something divine in that.

When we are kids, we appreciate things uncomplicatedly.

I loved my comic books and cartoons that allowed me to escape the pains and limitations of my life.

The Hulk had unlimited power as a function of rage. The madder he got, the stronger he got. The more you mistreated him, the mightier he was. The fact that it was a troubling essay in anger management, to an 8-year-old, was immaterial.

Bugs Bunny vanquished every adversary, cracking jokes the entire time. He was not just invincible. He was unshakeable. I can look back now at some of his tactics and see that they were preposterously violent, and gleefully sadistic. While he may have played off fights at the beginning, he never deescalated once he reached “of course you realize THIS means war.”

Voltron showed the power of a team that worked together, who always had an ace in their back pocket, and always had each other’s backs. In retrospect, I do wonder why they didn’t just form up from the get-go and win easy. At the time, though, it was pure magic.

Those are three examples. I have thousands.

The point is that these characters, and their adventures, offered me a refuge, a happy place at times when too much of life was sad.

I loved games of the imagination that sheltered me from my world, or allowed me to transcend it.

I loved to laugh at Charlie Chaplin, and Monty Python, and Peter Sellers, and Leslie Nielsen.

And then “I grew up.”

Or in my case, possibly not. Plenty of things from my childhood still amuse me. But that is another essay.

At a certain point, in life, though, we start closing our innocent places of refuge.

We become too cool to enjoy simple escapism.

We gain access to far more harmful toys.

We wrestle with whether or not we can appreciate something once we think we know too much about the people, or processes, that created it.

I was aware of this tension even as I wrote.

Some people will judge me for having enjoyed The Friends Experience without a side essay on its comparisons to Living Single.

Some will judge me for being a 49 year old man on a Taylor Swift tour.

And these are questions I ask as I mature.

Can I still love The Cosby Show or Woody Allen movies despite my complicated sense of their creators? Can I laugh at old Roseanne Barr Jokes if I don’t like the new ones?

Maybe, maybe not. Maybe in some cases, not others.

That’s for each of us to decide.

You can have some great early memories of a relationship ruined by your later experiences. That’s just life.

Or you can cherish something from a more innocent time, and remember it, not only as it was, but as you were.

We are responsible for the truths we know. How we respond to them is the question.

For today, I rejoice in the opportunity to experience someone else’s sacred space.

I came. I saw. I learned something. And I am better for it.

Traveling mercies.

(Photo Credit:William Fortunato)