Following in My Father’s Footsteps: A London Trip Through Time

This post originally appeared on CAPA World Blog in September 2015

Sometimes, when I'm standing in an empty underground platform waiting for the rush of the next train, when I'm walking down an unfamiliar street crowded with unfamiliar people, wondering how I'll make it where I need to go, or when night has fallen and I realize again that I'm on my own, I like to remember that twenty-nine years ago, when he was my age, my father was in the exact same place.

I remember that he was here in London on his own, riding the same tube lines, walking the same streets, facing the same question of what his future would bring. I remember how when I was little, he would tell me about the time he spent studying abroad, about everything he saw and how it impacted his life, and how I thought, Someday, I'll do that too. And now, here I am. And I know that if he did it, I can do it too.

Traveling by bus to Finchley

In my first week in London, when I was exhausted and overwhelmed by the newness of the city and the largeness of my journey, I called my dad and told him I didn't know what I was doing. I had sky-high expectations and ambitious aspirations, and suddenly, I wasn't as ready as I thought to take them all on.

Little wonders on London streets — and my favorite UK coffee shop, Costa

I had classes to attend and papers to write, an internship to prepare for and an interview to tackle, a new system of transportation and a vast, unfamiliar city to navigate, and the premature dream of further travel plans that I couldn't even begin to consider at the moment in the face of everything else.

I was embarking on a completely new life, and though I knew it was temporary, it was a complete stranger to me. And with all the responsibilities of that new life, I suddenly felt as if my vision of adventure was shrinking. How could I find the wonder I sought when there was so much else on my plate?

My dad told me to calm down, to slow down. He said that instead of trying to take on everything at once, I should just focus on each next step, one at a time. He said to look for beauty in the little things, the little moments that happened only in London, and the rest would come when I'm ready.

I wondered what little things appeared beautiful to him when he was here — and what big things. I wondered what about the city had changed and what had stayed the same in the time between us. And I decided to begin my quest for simple beauty by following a day in his footsteps — seeing what he had seen.

Ossulton Way, the street my father lived on during his study abroad experience

On a Sunday, I found the address of the old house in East Finchley where my father had stayed with a host family when he was in London. It was only three miles from my own homestay — less than an hour away by bus or tube.

I set off on my own and boarded two buses that took me through parts of London I could never have seen from the underground — places with art shops and little cafes and hilltop views of London expanding below me. I sat on the top of a double-decker, just like I'd imagined, and watched the city unfold as I made my way to where it unfolded for my father.

I passed parks full of biking children and streets lined with colorful storefronts. I traveled through old neighborhoods with high trees lining the walks. I passed the station where my dad caught the tube every day, and I walked slowly up the street that had once led him home.

When I finally found myself standing before his old house at 36 Ossulton Way, I felt as if I was looking through time. As I gazed through the loft window over the garage, I imagined my twenty-year old father peering back at me, not yet knowing who I was or why I had come. Maybe he had questions then too. Maybe he didn't know any more than I do now, and the world felt wide and strange and exciting.

The site of my father’s former homestay

I thought about how everything I see here for the first time, he once saw through similar eyes. I thought about beauty in things vast and things small — ancient buildings and red buses, bookshops and slowly changing leaves, ever-shifting bursts of rain and sun, and uniformed children riding home from school in the evening. I wondered how my father saw these things, and if he thought about them the same way I do, and whether he wondered what might be ahead of him. For a moment, through the years, it was as if we existed in the same place, the same mind.

And as I made my way back down the street where he once lived, I felt like even though we were apart in space and time, it was a walk we made together.