Last weekend was one of the most emotionally loaded (80% extremally happy, 10% very sad, and 10% super exciting) I’ve had in years.

I call it “a weekend” while my husband calls it “a week,” and we are both sort of right. I left our house in New Jersey on Wednesday and came back on Tuesday just to spend three full days with my family in Poland where I grew up but haven’t lived in 19 years. I cried at least half a dozen times (not the actual audible, messy cry but, you know, the silent “I can’t let the tears drop or it will ruin my mascara right before the pictures” type of cry).

    But, let’s start from the beginning.

    A few weeks ago I found out that my two nephews are planning a big surprise party for their parents. My brother and his wife happened to be born exactly one week apart and were turning 50 this November. The idea was so sweet and thoughtful (surprise parties aren’t nearly as popular in Poland as they are in the US) that I immediately wondered if there was any way I could join my family for this special celebration. And since the party was a surprise, I would also keep my flying 4500 miles from the US a secret. I did something similar 14 years earlier — dressed as Santa and flew over to surprise my family during Christmas dinner. As you can imagine, their reaction was priceless. So, I was hoping to recreate a similar level of excitement for everyone with this surprise trip over a decade later.

    I was wondering how this idea would sit with my husband, whose top 3 most important things in life are me, our kids, and an uninterrupted nine- to ten-hour sleep a night. If you know him, you know that the only reason he would ever wake up earlier than 8:30am would be if there was a fire in the house or to fly to his own honeymoon (oh wait, forget it, he did pay extra for an afternoon flight; fire is definitely the only reason).

    As luck would have it though, during the previous weekend the clocks were changed and his old 8.30am wake-up time became 7.30am! Which is just in time to get the girls ready for school! The stars were aligning for me, so with most obstacles out of the way, all I needed to do then was find a ticket.

    Excited for my first solo trip in years, I thought it would be even more amazing if I could quickly stop over to some European city I hadn’t been to yet, like Amsterdam or London. I used to travel a lot in my pre-kid life and the drive to see a new place whenever possible is still there, even if I don’t act on it as often as before.

    I was hoping to use an old credit with United (for some trip that was canceled during the pandemic) or 120k miles on one of my credit cards to make it happen, but that turned out to be too much of a hassle. (If you’ve ever tried to book a flight with 3 destinations, you know that it often turns out almost as expensive as two separate trips.) So I just gave up on this idea and decided to buy the simplest: a direct flight from Newark to Warsaw. Flights from Newark are usually $200–$300 cheaper than from Philadelphia, and since getting to Newark adds only about 45 minutes to the drive, that airport became my usual departure point whenever I travel.

    Just out of curiosity, though, I decided to check flights from Philadelphia to Warsaw and found one for $510 (if you fly to Europe, you know this is an excellent price). The reason the flight was so cheap was because it had a… 23-hour layover in London on the way back! And yeah, most travelers just want to get quickly from point A to B. But not this one.

    I booked that flight with no hesitation, and within a few days, full of excitement, I boarded a plane to Warsaw. The trip took around 19 hours one way (including waiting at the airports and train station, a two-hour train ride, and a 20-minute taxi ride to my parents’ house).

    As I was getting off the cab across the street from my parents’ house, I first saw my dad on his bicycle leaving the house. He is a 72-year-old traditional Polish man who rarely shows emotions, but his face couldn’t hide them. Even though he was on his way to see a doctor because he wasn’t feeling well, I don’t think I’ve ever seen this much joy and happiness in him. My mom was right behind him and quickly ran toward me with the biggest smile, open arms, and words of disbelief. This was possibly one of the top 5 happiest moments of my life. Imagine living 4500 miles away from your parents for the last 20 years and visiting them almost exclusively in the summer and now suddenly showing up unannounced in November. The whole trip was worth it just to share this incredible moment with my parents. But… this was just the beginning, as I still had eight more people in my closest family to surprise. The only ones who knew about my secret visit were my middle brother and the oldest nephew. (I needed to confirm the date for the party, and knew I could trust them not to spill the beans.)

    The night that I arrived, after going to the doctor with my mom and dad, we spent the rest of the day and the entire next day just hanging out. At the age of 40, I, for the first time in my life, spent 24 hours alone with my parents while talking and drinking endless cups of tea. Back when I lived in Poland, prior to 2003, my brother and his family still stayed in the same house. And in the last few years, every time I visited I brought my kids and husband. So this really was the first time my parents and I spent together without any interruptions.

    Then I went to visit my middle brother, who knew I was coming. His 10-year-old son came down, saw me, and then ran up to tell his 15-year-old brother that I’m downstairs. My older nephew didn’t even react (convinced his little brother was lying) until he heard my voice and came to say hi, thinking his parents were on a video call with me. It was fun to see their confused but happy faces.

     The next day we all drove about an hour to my oldest brother’s neighborhood, a venue where the surprise double birthday party was about to take place. Together with over forty other people, we waited with the lights off until my nephews lured their parents into the best unexpected birthday celebration I’ve ever seen. There was a huge custom cake (in the shape of a sheep barn—more about that some other time), a DJ who also played the saxophone, and even some fireworks! But of course, the most incredible thing about the party was that my brother and his wife were both truly shocked. They hadn’t expected anything and certainly didn’t expect me to be there also. It was the most amazing evening full of astonished faces, warm hugs, kisses, laughter, toasts, and dancing.

    My entire trip was just loaded with so many extremely positive emotions so, not surprisingly, when it was time to be dropped off at the train station on Monday morning, I became overwhelmed with sadness. My life is in the US now. It has been for almost 20 years. But spending a long weekend with my closest family reminded me how much I’m missing. All because I chose to live four thousand miles away from them in a country that I now consider HOME and where my loving husband and children were waiting for me. I thought so many thoughts and felt so many feelings at that moment.

    I also remembered something from the book I had recently read. It was Happier Hour by Cassie Holmes, in which she talks about how to make sure we won’t take simple things for granted. For example, if you are dreading walking your dog or having dinner with your parents, she recommends stopping for a second and calculating how many of these simple events you have left and then figuring out what percentage of it already happened. You may realize that you only have about 10% of dinners with your parents left, or if your dog is older, only 5% of walks (of course these are just estimates, but the numbers are very powerful).

    Using this method, it didn’t take me long to realize how little time I have left with my parents. They are both in their 70s and I usually visit them only once a year for a week or so. The percentage of days we have together compared to those we have already spent together is depressingly low. That feeling of sadness lingered with me until I arrived in London and the excitement of being alone in a new city took over. London was great, but this story isn’t really about travel.

    So what is it about? Why am I sharing all these details about my previous week with you?

Here are the reasons:

• As we get married and have kids, we often direct all our attention and time towards our children and spouses, leaving very little of it to all the other important people in our lives. This trip made me realize how much I value the time spent with my parents and siblings. Especially because there is so little of it. Perhaps you may have a similar realization and be inspired to redistribute your time and attention among your loved ones more evenly.

• I’ve been studying the science behind happiness for the last two years, (let me know if you want to participate in my new happiness-boosting workshop. It’s in a testing phase right now!) and one of the most common ideas behind whether money can buy happiness is that yes, it can, but instead of buying things, you need to buy experiences. Better yet if the experiences are shared with others. The money I spent on this trip provided me and my loved ones with so much happiness! There is nothing I could buy that would have a similar effect on my well-being. You don’t know what to buy for Christmas? A great experience you can share!

• Constantly staying in our comfort zones and never deviating from our routines is a recipe for a… nice, monotonous life. But if we want to experience some extraordinary highs, we may need to do something different and unpredictable. Of course, it would have been easier to just text my brother “Happy Birthday” and avoid the “two hours of sleep” nights, exhaustion, and traveling for three full days, but would doing it make me even 10% as happy as going to see him in person? Not a chance.

• I hope I will inspire you to think about people that you are close to and how much time you have left with them (how many dinners, concerts, Christmases, or summers you have left together), and even if that realization makes you sad temporarily, hopefully you can make the best out of these remaining events together, as I also plan to cherish every day I spend with my parents. And maybe I can even see them twice a year from now on.

• Bonnie Ware, in her book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying (a beautifully thought-provoking book, I recommend), tells us about the confessions of her terminally ill clients. Their biggest life regrets were almost always related to the neglected relationships and lack of self-love and courage to live the lives they wanted to live. I figured I will mention it here too because the idea of my trip was 100% inspired by this powerful message. I really don’t want to regret anything on my deathbed, and I believe you don’t either <3.

Here is also a short video of my trip: A week trip in 3 minutes