How to Unpattern
The apartment was quiet when I returned. The suitcase waited untouched by the door, though I was already unpacking in other ways.
Lisbon was exactly as I’d left it, the soft light through the windows, the smell of the summer heat lingering faintly in the air. Familiarity returned quickly. But something inside took longer to arrive. It was still somewhere up in the mountains.
We had been in a small ski village in Canada last week. My partner, my parents, my sister, my brother-in-law, my nephew. A shared birthday with my sister, and a family vacation folded around it. Time together that felt both rare and full.
What surprised me most was not the scenery, although beautiful and inspiring. It was the spaciousness of being together, uninterrupted. Not by time so much, but by patterns.
Usually, when I’m with family, we gather in someone’s home. And in each home, something quiet and near-invisible takes hold. A pattern. Someone becomes the host. Someone becomes the helper. Someone becomes the guest. I often become tech support—fixing wireless printers, troubleshooting websites, rearranging apps.
But this time, we were somewhere that belonged to no one. A rented apartment with unfamiliar linens, an oddly shaped kitchen, and walls that held no memories. For once, the house didn't tell us who to be.
We shared meals differently. One person would start chopping vegetables while another found spices tucked behind mixing bowls. Someone had already done groceries without being asked. Someone else would quietly wash dishes while a game carried on in the next room. There were no plans. There was no one “in charge.” There was just movement. Exchange. Offering. Receiving.
My nephew, just four and a half, seemed especially alive to it. Curious, playful. His habits didn’t settle in because they had nowhere familiar to land. In this in-between place, he didn’t fall into routines he’d learned at his home or at his grandparents’. He created new ones, and they looked like delight.
That was when I began to notice what had really shifted. It wasn’t just our location. It was something subtler. It was the unpatterning.
There is comfort in patterns. I’ve built many of them into my life here in Lisbon—mornings that begin with hikes, evenings that end with friends. Routines that make the ordinary beautiful. Routines that feel alive and chosen.
But there are other patterns too. Ones I don’t always choose. Ones that choose me.
Returning to my parents’ home can feel like stepping into a costume I outgrew. A version of myself shaped by relationships that once made sense, but now feel slightly out of rhythm. Nothing is wrong. Nothing is uncomfortable. But there is less space to move. Less space to reintroduce myself, as I am now.
Environments have a silent authority. They hold memory. They hold expectation. And without realizing it, I often move to meet them.
Some places invite a self I’ve carefully grown into. Other places summon a self long gone, but quietly preserved in the paint, in the couch, in the dishes we always use.
That’s what made this family vacation different. We were together. But we had left the setting behind. And in that space, a different kind of relating became possible. A different kind of being.
Comfort, without history. Presence, without prescription. Belonging, without blueprint.
I began to wonder what it would be like to travel this way more often. Not just physically, but emotionally. To ask quietly before gatherings what space might allow for a new shape of connection? What setting could allow something unexpected to emerge?
It reminded me that experience is always being designed, even when unconsciously. The environment is part of that design. It sets the stage, even before the first word is spoken.
By stepping outside of our usual frame, a small miracle occurred: the frame did not follow us.
And that is how I learned to Unpattern.
