When Gotland Didn’t Happen!

The idea of travelling alone had never really occurred to me. We’ve always travelled together—mostly to Gotland, occasionally to India, but rarely beyond the familiar orbit. Over the years, I’ve developed a set of travel rituals: boarding the flight, indulging in low-grade nosiness, observing fellow passengers, judging them gently, and of course, scanning the cabin for hot ones.

I do suffer from what I call the “Unknown Middle Seat Passenger Syndrome”—a specific brand of mid-flight paranoia. Who will it be? A child with a shriek? A talkative crypto bro? A silent farter? There’s a strange existential drama that unfolds at 30,000 feet. While your life is briefly on hold, you begin inventing stories for strangers, wondering if one of them might just change the trajectory of your own.

So when Gunnel—Tété’s 86-year-old mother—reacted the way she did, it took me a few days to process it. You see, I had already imagined Gotland. I had assumed it. Booked the flights in February. Dreamt up the sea breeze, the pebbled beaches, the greenhouse smell of the botanical gardens, the swims in the Baltic—full monty, of course. On Gotland, time always stops for me. Three and a half weeks of quiet rituals: the chambrette, my bed, books, silence. A time to shut the world out and let words come in. I craved it. I lusted after it. And I should have known better.

But I didn’t keep a Plan B. Because we rarely do when the past has always shown up on time. But change, like age, arrives uninvited. It doesn’t knock. It just enters.

Gunnel, once the indomitable belle demoiselle of the house—the woman who could host a dinner, challenge her guests with dry wit, and navigate online banking before fintech had a name—has slowed. A lifelong reader, a digital native before the term existed. She scrolled, read, ordered, paid—often with more style and steel than the Gen Zs she secretly rolled her eyes at.

But now, it’s different. She waits for un meilleur jour—a better day when her mind might catch up to her will. Her gestures have softened, her gaze lingers longer. Her clarity comes and goes, but her grace holds firm.

I’ve known this family for over two decades—met them in the prime of my own becoming. And yet nothing prepares you for this slow fade. The moment when you realise everyone around you is aging. Including yourself. Am I aging gracefully? Blissfully? That, too, is a moving target.

So the plan to be in Visby for Stockholmsveckan had to be reviewed, rethought, rewritten. Tété, now in his mid-sixties, remains a bel homme—handsome in his melancholy.

But even he couldn’t quite make sense of his mother’s refusal. Her sudden retreat from the world she once commanded with such quiet authority has left him suspended between guilt, worry, and incomprehension. He shrugs, half-explains, pauses mid-sentence—like he’s trying to translate a language he no longer speaks fluently.

Who am I to intrude on the sacred entanglements of mother and son? Those ties stretch across decades, layered with silence, laughter, rebellion, reconciliation—and now, this stillness. It’s not drama. It’s not a rupture. It’s the soft, slow erosion of age. Time doesn’t always come with thunder; sometimes it arrives gently, and simply stays.

I’ve seen that house on Gotland shimmer with life—mornings of buttered crispbread and pressed coffee, books scattered across the garden table, the Baltic wind rushing through freshly laundered curtains. Gunnel in her element, moving between rooms like a lighthouse keeper tending to light.

But now, the beam is dimmer. And even the son, the witness to her long command, seems adrift. This is how time takes people from us—not always by death, but by turning sharp minds into soft landscapes. And so, I step back. Watchful. Respectful. Grateful that I’ve seen that woman in her full spectrum of grace. Grateful too that I still get to go—elsewhere, alone, differently.

All I know is this: I am on a solo trip to Scandinavia. My first. Untethered not only from the buzz of Paris I call home, but from the grand opera of expectations. I walk. I watch. I wander. Somewhere between Stockholm and Baltic shores, something loosened its grip on me.

For now, that’s enough.

Vi ses.
(See you soon in Swedish.)

To be continued…