“Remember, you are a weeping willow,” my therapist winks at me as I push myself up from my crater in her satin marigold couch, finishing my last sips of chai tea. I sigh as I throw my winter jacket on and trudge out of the quaint brick row house, the wooden planks creaking under my plods. The cold winter sun and cheerful Dutch canal are an immediate contrast to my foul mood and difficult not to appreciate.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?,” my sister replies over Facetime, only her eyes and hard hat visible as she looks out the window of her Subaru in a cold gas station parking lot in Northern Colorado. Although there’s sunlight hitting both of our faces, her day is just beginning while mine is drawing to a close.

“Uhhh, you know, I’ve got strong roots, I can stay grounded when the wind blows while I’m going through changes, that kind of thing,” I stammer, trying to regain her attention before she gets called into the field to take water samples (or whatever it is that she does). She’s right though, the weeping willow platitude does border on cliche.

One of our shared core memories is standing in front of Grandmother Willow as child participants of the live show “Pocahontas and her Forest Friends” at Disney World on 9/11. The robotic tree had just fallen silent the Powhatan Princess had just exited the stage as we were hurriedly evacuated from the theme park. Talk about change on a global level. We were met with the standstill of lockdown (long before the word was synonymous with ‘pandemic’) in our hotel for the next week while the park staff ensured the national security of… Animal Kingdom?

Apparently, the Weeping Willow (‘Salix babylonica’) is of Chinese origin and is an invasive species brought to the U.S. in the late 1700s (add that to the list of historical inaccuracies of Disney’s ‘Pocahontas’ set in 1607). I’d love to spend some time in China one day, but for now, my closest geographical exposure to the willows’ homelands was my trip to Northern Vietnam over Christmas 2022.

During that trip, I wandered the bustling labyrinth of Hanoi alone, savoring the best meals I’ve ever had, prepared and served by elderly women out of their small steel carts. I enjoyed the best meal I’ve ever had, a mushy gray savory porridge, topped with fried soy and pork floss, eaten hunched over on colorful plastic stools (my ½ foot height difference made their world a bit too small for me). The streets there teemed with hip teenagers, junk stores, and street vendors peddling rice cakes on their bicycles.

Motorbikes flew through every intersection like mad bee swarms; I’d never seen anything like it… except maybe the bicycle lanes near Amsterdam Central Station at rush hour. Or a busy day at the BMX park nestled in the foothills on the highway between my sister’s and parents’ homes in the Denver suburbs.

As a kid, most of our 13 moves often left me feeling unsettled– the struggles of making new friends, adapting to a new American subculture and accent, memorizing yet another address. As an adult, I’ve chased change, adding another 6 moves to the list, hoping to reinvent myself and outrun my fears and anxieties. But as they say, wherever you go, there you are.

Peyton v28 doesn’t have the same deep south drawl as v17, but now speaks with a Northern European sing-songy lilt. She’s met up with lifelong friends in Chicago, Munich, London, and Krakow over the past two years. She’s trying to stop pinning her expectations on rigid definitions of home or love and is working on identifying the qualities that support flexible versions of them.

In the weeks before this writing, I’ve experienced the sting of mutual rejection from four not-so-great first dates, the physical pain of a bike accident on an icy canal bridge, and the disappointment of a failed work project. But I’ve also celebrated friends’ milestones, spent a few dark European winter nights playing Catan and cooking dinner with my roommate, and spotted a chihuahua in a neon green puffer and doggie sunglasses. I may not be strong enough to suppress feelings of loneliness in modern dating or keep tears at bay after my bike tumble. But weeping willows can handle a little whiplash.