We were all in Rome together, my four grown sons and me — all of us with shiny, new passports, a worse-than-average grasp of the Italian language, and bus passes to get to the Centro Storico district. It was our first holiday more than a few hours from our little town — the big trip I'd been dreaming about since I became a mom 25 years ago. But it was on the cusp of being a bust.

We weren't quite able to agree on what we wanted from the trip. I wanted everyone to be yogic, meditative, inside their own bodies but also as a sort of hive mind, too — joyous and grateful and always thinking: "Rome. We are all in Rome together."