Mother and daughter: Sitting on the CN Tower look out.

Growing up, we didn’t travel much - except for summer road trips to a family-owned property. My first plane trip came at the age of seven. From Halifax to Toronto, then to Orlando, Florida, where we would spend about a week at Disney World. It wouldn’t be until I was twenty-one that I boarded a plane again.

The CN Tower is a Canadian experience that most of my peers checked off their bucket list by high school. I remember feeling as if I were the only person who hadn’t been inside this tower. The older I got, the more annoying it became when it was brought up every year by those who often travelled to Toronto or by family members who lived there.

This year, I can finally say I did it. I rode the elevator to the top of the CN Tower and stood over the Rogers Centre as the Blue Jays played.

A simple act to reclaim my childhood.

Now I can say:

“Been there. Done that.”

While in Toronto, we leaned in not to what we, as adults, felt we wanted to do, but to what our newly ten-year-old wanted to do. Surprisingly, this led us into the Campbell House Museum and the Art Gallery of Ontario, where she could spend hours upon hours walking from room to room - especially Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrored Rooms.

It’s so easy to ‘direct’ our children into what we believe them to be - but the magic of parenting for me is found when you provide the space for exploration, conversation and questions. It is within that space that you often see something within the child you are raising that you never would have initiated or led them to on your own.

The real Ace move I found here was being open enough to see the world through a pre-teen's eyes—specifically, the one I am raising.