LAWSON'S LIGHT The Christmas our six-year-old became our guide Christmas 2024 | London • Paris • Montreux • Geneva “We thought we were taking Lawson to see the Eiffel Tower. Instead, our six-year-old became our guide.” The Wish Our family has this tradition. Christmas has often been less about what we put under the tree and more about where we go together. We have always believed experiences last longer than things. Long after you forget the flight number or the hotel room, you remember the conversations, the laughter, the food somebody tried for the first time, the little moments that become part of your family's language. That rhythm changed when Lawson was born. For a while, we wanted him to have the Christmas we thought a little boy should know - the tree, Santa, presents, cousins, family everywhere. And then, little by little, travel found its way back into Christmas too. Christmas 2024 was different because this time we asked our six-year-old what he wanted. He did not hesitate. "I want to see the Eiffel Tower." Not Disney. Not a beach. The Eiffel Tower. David and I laughed, but underneath the laughter was something else. Somehow this little boy had already begun to think of the world as a place he could ask to see. That landed differently for each of us. David grew up with a passport in his hand before he could walk, in a family where each generation had found a way to make the world a little wider for the next. I came to much of that kind of exposure later, and the wonder of discovery has never left me. Neither story is better. They are simply different. And somehow Lawson is growing up at the meeting place of both - access and awe. Watching him ask for Paris felt like watching possibility expand in real time. A Detour That Became a Gift Using points meant the easiest route to Paris took us through London first. We explained that we could make the Eiffel Tower happen, but Christmas Day would be in London. Then we gave him the consolation prize: Big Ben. David asked if he even knew what Big Ben was. Lawson looked at us like we were the ones who needed help. Of course he knew. Paw Patrol had already handled the geography lesson. The Eiffel Tower had entered his imagination through Miraculous Ladybug. It still makes me smile that cartoons helped build our Christmas itinerary. There was one other decision before we left that mattered more to David than Lawson could have understood. After a year of heavy work travel, David was one flight away from reaching a major airline status goal. He could have taken a separate flight to London, landed within minutes of us, and crossed that finish line. He chose not to. It was Lawson's first trip across the Atlantic. David wanted to be sitting beside him when it happened. There are milestones you earn, and there are moments you choose. Sometimes the better thing is not the thing with a status attached to it. London, in Light We landed on Christmas morning. The hotel had a Christmas tree and little activities for children. An older boy sat drawing snowflakes with Lawson, and for a few minutes Christmas felt both completely unfamiliar and completely familiar at the same time. Then we stepped into London. Years before, David and I had traveled through Europe together - London, Brussels, Paris, Amsterdam. I loved that trip, but London had not stayed with me the way the other cities did. Much of what I remembered happened after dark. The city felt gray, cold and heavy. I left thinking I had probably seen enough. Then Lawson took us back. The day we rode the London Eye had begun in fog. We spent the day walking and exploring London beneath that gray veil, and by the time we finally boarded the Eye, night had fallen. As the capsule rose, we climbed above the lingering haze. The city that had felt obscured all morning began to open beneath us - lights, streets, landmarks coming into focus as we rose. London revealed itself from the darkness. Earlier that day, while we were walking the city, we wandered into Harrods. Since I have always loved fashion - it was its own kind of sightseeing: floor after floor of beautiful things and brands we were perfectly happy to admire without pretending they were in the budget that afternoon. Downstairs, we found a little cafe where we actually stood in line for seats at the counter. Lawson had hot chocolate while we had cappuccinos with designs in the foam, and we shared little gourmet desserts. It was small, warm and completely unplanned - one of those moments that becomes part of the trip precisely because nobody traveled across an ocean expecting it. Another day, London gave us an even more ordinary surprise. Lawson was six, which meant that at some point Europe still needed to provide a McDonald's. While we were there, we met another family with two children around his age. The kids clicked, the adults started talking, and when they told us they were headed to a pub around the corner, we went with them. We exchanged numbers, and they later invited us to their annual St. Patrick's Day party at their home in Chicago. We had gone in for a six-year-old's familiar meal and walked out having met new friends. Travel does that sometimes: the world gets bigger, and somehow more familiar, at the same time. That became one of the quiet patterns of the trip: we thought we were returning to places we knew. Lawson kept making them new. We wandered through Hyde Park Winter Wonderland - lights everywhere, Christmas markets, rides, food in the cold air, laughter, and hot drinks warming our hands. Lawson, who was afraid of roller coasters, climbed onto one with us. He was terrified. He survived. He announced that he never wanted to do that again. And yet, not long after, back home, he was getting on roller coasters and loving them. Sometimes courage does not announce itself when it arrives. Sometimes it is just a tiny seed planted on a cold Christmas night in London. We also did something wonderfully ordinary in the middle of all that wonder: we took our Sonic-obsessed child to see Sonic the Hedgehog 3 in a London movie theater. It was simple but magical, it was our first movie theater experience in a different country. I had a craving for Indian food, so we asked around for recommendations. A bartender at our hotel and another guest both insisted we go to Dishoom., and Lawson never really cared much for Indian food he agreed to indulge his mommy. He ordered the butter chicken. Now he asks for it at home at least twice a week. London really Dishoom changed the way he ate. We have passed this recommendation to several people since, it was probably the best meal we had in and London and that’s saying a lot. The trip followed us home. (forever grateful) Paris – From Wish to Reality Then we boarded the train to Paris, traveling toward the place Lawson had asked for in the first place. The journey itself became a story. A train problem near the Channel Tunnel turned what should have been a few hours into most of a day. By the time we reached Paris, it was the middle of the night. We were exhausted, cold and hungry. Then our taxi delivered us to the wrong street. The Airbnb code would not work. The host was not answering. We had luggage, a six-year-old running on fumes, and that particular kind of middle-of-the-night travel panic where every doorway suddenly looks suspicious. Eventually we discovered there were two similarly named streets. A cab driver helped us get to the right one. When we finally entered the apartment, it was freezing. That first Paris night was not magical. But The next day was. Paris did not disappoint him in the Slightest. When Lawson finally stood in front of the Eiffel Tower, his face told us everything. The thing he had seen on a screen, the thing he had asked for months earlier, was real and towering over him. David and I had been to Paris before 10 years prior, but had never gone up the Eiffel Tower. This time we said there was no way we’ve brought Lawson all the way there and were going to stop at the bottom. So we went up. And once again, Lawson made something familiar new for us. He wanted to explore. He wanted to learn. He wanted to understand what he was seeing rather than simply stand in front of it for a photograph. It was better than any of us could imagine. Then his grandmother asked him if he knew the history of Arc de Triomphe and he did not know the answer, so he did what curious people do: he went and found out. By New Year's Eve, standing near the Arc with the celebration around us, the monument had context. It had a story. And he wanted to know it. That night, people shouted, \"Bonne année!\" So Lawson shouted it too. And then he kept shouting it, all the way home, sending New Year's joy out the cab window to whoever happened to be within range. It was his first international New Year's Eve. For David and me, it was also a strange and beautiful return. Years earlier, we had celebrated a New Year's Eve in Paris together. Now we were back, watching our son inherit the joy of it. When the Trip Went Quiet We ended the journey in Switzerland. After London lights, roller coasters, markets and movies; after Paris trains, wrong addresses, monuments, sickness, medicine, dinner, fireworks and celebration - Switzerland was stillness. David had been telling me for years that if the Rocky Mountains moved me, I needed to see the Swiss Alps. We arrived in Montreux and checked into the Grand Hotel Suisse Majestic. Because of David's hotel status and the quiet season, we were upgraded into a beautiful suite facing Lake Geneva and the mountains. We opened the curtains. And there they were. Floor-to-ceiling glass. The lake below us. The Alps rising across the water so close they almost felt reachable. David had described them to me for years. He was right. Description had not been enough. The mountains have always felt sacred to me - the kind of place where the noise falls away and God feels close. This felt like that, only deeper. Lawson took his sketchbook onto the balcony. David told him to draw whatever inspired him. So he sat at the table and drew the mountains and the lake while I stood at the railing taking it all in. There is a photograph from that moment: Lawson drawing, me looking toward the Alps, David inside the room looking out at both of us. It feels like the whole trip in one frame. A Brand-New Boy The hotel also had a wellness area with a sauna, steam room and showers. Because the hotel was so quiet, the three of us practically had the place to ourselves. So there we were: Mom, Dad and a six-year-old in robes and slippers, doing spa time as a family. At one point Lawson discovered the shower room. He came back announcing that it was the best shower of his life. David investigated and confirmed that this was apparently serious business. Later, walking back down the hallway, David recorded Lawson and asked how he felt. \"I feel like a brand-new boy.\" That line still makes us laugh because it was so completely him - joy without self-consciousness. He was not trying to perform gratitude. He was simply delighted by a good thing and willing to enjoy it fully. By our last night, in Geneva, he had fully embraced the hotel-life portion of travel. He emerged from another enormous shower wearing one of the adult robes. When David pointed out that it was his robe, Lawson's answer was essentially: I just felt like I deserved this. We laughed. But underneath the joke was another thing David and I found ourselves thinking about. We want Lawson to work. We want him to understand effort, sacrifice and stewardship. We also want him to know that life is not always a transaction where every good thing arrives only because you earned exactly enough for it. Sometimes a door opens that you did not know to ask about. Sometimes your work creates access you could not have purchased outright. Sometimes someone helps your family on a dark street in Paris. Sometimes the room is better than the one you booked. Sometimes you stand in front of a view that exceeds the picture you carried in your mind. Call it grace. Call it blessing. Call it life being more generous than expected. Whatever the name, we hope he learns to recognize those moments - not with entitlement, but with openness. With gratitude. With the ability to receive something beautiful without immediately believing he was owed it. Maybe part of raising a child is teaching him to strive for a full life while still leaving room to be surprised by one. Lawson's Light We had always believed we were exposing Lawson to the world. That was part of why we traveled with him in the first place. We wanted him to know early that the world was larger than his neighborhood, larger than his country, larger than any single way of living or thinking. But this trip reversed the lens. He exposed us to something too. He showed me a London I had never seen. He took us back to the Eiffel Tower and gave us a reason to finally go up. He turned cartoons geography into life altering experiences, fear into the beginning of courage, a restaurant meal into a new favorite food, monuments into questions, a train delay into family folklore, a balcony into an art studio, and a hotel shower into the birthplace of a brand-new boy. He reminded both of us that familiarity can make adults stop looking closely. And he made us think differently about what we are actually handing forward. Every generation hopes to expand something for the next one. David comes from a family that taught him early that the world could be crossed. I carry the wonder of discovering how much larger life can become when you step beyond what is familiar. Together, we hope Lawson inherits both - access and awe. But maybe there is something else now too. Permission. Permission to be curious. Permission to cross borders and enter unfamiliar places expecting there may be something there to learn, love or carry home. Permission to ask for something as big as the Eiffel Tower without first deciding it is too far away. Permission to work hard for a good life and still remain open to the possibility that life may sometimes give him more than he knew to ask for. Permission to receive those moments with wonder instead of entitlement, gratitude instead of assumption. His full name is Lawson Edward Dixon. His initials are L.E.D. We have long called him Lawson's Light. On this trip, that name felt almost literal. I had once remembered London in darkness. Through him, I saw it in light. We had seen many of these places before. Through Lawson, we saw them differently. And perhaps that is one of the quiet miracles of raising a child: you spend so much time believing you are showing them the world that you can miss the moment when they begin showing it back to you. We thought we were taking Lawson to see the Eiffel Tower. Instead, our six-year-old became our guide. And somewhere between the London fog clearing beneath us, the Eiffel Tower rising above Paris, and the stillness of the Alps across Lake Geneva, we realized the greatest thing we brought home was not another stamp in a passport. It was a different way of seeing.