Bravery

I’ve just been round the world in 36 days and taken my two kids, aged 8 & 11, with me. One of the most frequent comments from friends and acquaintances has been, ‘You’re brave, taking the kids.’ I find this odd.

Not taking them didn’t occur to me, to be honest. I would have taken my partner if he hadn’t had to work, but I doubt anyone would have said, “Ooo, you’re brave, taking your partner.” Which would have been true as most of the people we stayed with were my relatives.

I think I probably do have an odd attitude to my kids. I’m not from the ‘seen and not heard’ school of child rearing. I guess travelling as the only adult with two kids might be seen as tougher than having two adults around, but I am the only adult most of the time they’re with me so I didn’t really give it a thought.

So why did I take them out of school for five weeks and drag them right around the world? Because we’re a family and we do things as a family. There’s no bravery involved. Whether we wake up in my house in the Eastern Suburbs, or in a hotel room in Florence, we still interact the same way. There are the same rules around manners, bedtimes, what foods get eaten and when, not hitting your sister and not winding up your brother.

It was an amazing opportunity for them to experience life and culture outside their small suburban world. And I got to look after them through that process. Who better, except perhaps their father, to keep them safe, answer their questions, allay their concerns?

When I was 16 I went overseas with my father. It was only as far as Australia, but the trip made a huge impression on me. For one thing I got a chance to see my dad in a different environment, and I felt much closer to him. It made me realise that other countries are different (even if not so very different), but it’s possible to live comfortably in them (yeah, obvious but maybe not so if you’ve never been away). It made me realise that other cultures don’t need to be feared – underneath it people were pretty similar. My dad was Hungarian and we visited some Hungarian people who were settled in Australia. They did much the same things as the Hungarian people back home in NZ. But best of all, people made us welcome, took care of us, and we were the centre of attention.

And it was the same on my trip with the kids. We stayed with relatives almost everywhere and it was an affirmation of family contacts, a chance for the kids to meet a whole bunch of rellies they hadn’t met before (and didn’t even know existed, some of them), and a chance for everyone to catch up, not just on what we were all doing, but our respective wider families as well. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world, and I wouldn’t have denied my kids that chance. Not brave at all.

Ramblings

This is an opportunity for me to exercise some creative writing muscle. These pages are just my musings on life, appropos of whatever pops into my head.