A friend recently posted a photo on Facebook of his New York hotel: the stunning TWA Flight Center at JFK, designed in 1962 by Eero Saarinen and saved from demolition by preservationists with deep pockets. I walked through that terminal on Mother’s Day 1973 to catch the plane that would take me to London – where I hoped to find a summer job before my senior year of college – and, ultimately, a career as a travel writer. It was the first of many solo journeys, and my mother always said she never forgot the sight of me walking unaccompanied down that long, tubular corridor.