I guess my parents can still surprise me. Which is surprising.
Right
now I’m in some kind of world-travel twilight zone.
I’m
from a family of travellers. My nanna made the local paper when she backpacked
Asia in her 70’s. Yes, that clipping is still in a frame on her wall. My aunt
and uncle disappear to the Indian sub-continent every winter for four or five
months. Yes, it is hard not to resent them when they are tan in January. Mama
Janie’s parents were expats on a Spanish island, my brother spends summers co-coordinating
projects in Africa or exploring the Eastern bloc, and, obviously yes, I can’t
commit to staying in one place with any more conviction than I can declare that
Billy Bob Thornton isn’t a hot piece of silver fox ass who I would totally do
even though he is like, proper well old.
What? I like the idea of a fella who has
stories.
What
is absolute about my family, though, is that my parents? NOT TRAVELLERS.
Why would I want all that hassle of
jostling about everywhere when I live somewhere as beautiful as I do? Mama asks, to which I’m all URM. SHALL I GIVE YOU A LIST? But then I
remember ‘each to their own’ and all that positive karma stuff. Sometimes mums
like the idea of Derbyshire more than they like the notion of spaghetti marinara on the Riviera. Sometimes dads like the local pub more
than hauling a backpack around a dusty South American city with no bed booked
for the night, and little prospect of finding one.
I get
that.
I
mean, I think it makes you a bit dead inside, and I’m not sure we’ll have much
to talk about over dinner if you don’t want to Marco Polo the shit out of the
globe with the same fervent attention you lavish on watching Hollyoaks every
night, but whatever. You’re still cute.
HOWEVER.
My
dad just got a job in China.
MY.
DAD. JUST. GOT. A. JOB. IN. CHINA. SHUT. THE. FRONT. DOOR. DO. THEY. EVEN.
HAVE. BODDINGTONS. THAT. FAR. EAST. WHAT. THE. HELL. JUST. HAPPENED.
Life
has suddenly gone from Laura, when will
you come home and be with us? We miss you! to HEY LET’S GET THE FAMILY TOGETHER ON A REMOTE MALAYSIAN ISLAND TO
CELEBRATE MUMS BRITHDAY AND THEN TAKE HER TO HONG KONG AND TOBOGGAN ON THE
GREAT WALL BECAUSE IT’S CLOSER TO MY NEW HOME THAN DERBY IS!
My
world- pun intended- has been
somewhat flipped upside down in a way only Will Smith can empathise with. It’s
just… weird, thinking that for every six out of eight weeks my dad will be on
the other side of the world when for a long time he has told me to 'come home'.
Names
of cities are being sprinkled liberally over the ingredients of our
conversations, now, and I’m getting angry cross-country phone calls from my
brother wherein he yells WHAT DO YOU MEAN
YOU CAN’T COMMIT TO A FAMILY HOLIDAY IN MALAYSIA YOU DAFT BITCH. TAKE A HEARTY
DOSE OF GET THE HECK OVER YOURSELF AND GET INVOLVED!
The
last Skype call I had with Dad went like this:
Me: So,
you fly out to China in the middle of August?
Dad: Yes,
but first I have to go to Germany.
Me: Oh. Mama said
you were going to Taiwan first.
Dad: I am. After I
go to Turkey.
Me: WAIT. YOU’RE
GOING TO TURKEY? IS THAT AT THE BEGINNING OF YOUR TRIP?
Dad: Yeah, I’ve got
a week of meetings before we get into Asia.
Me: Well I could
meet you in Istanbul if it matches my days off… I’ve been wanting to take a
break from Italy, to be honest, and I get two days off then.
Dad: The 10th,
I’m there on the 10th. Does that work for you?
Me: Oh. No. I’m
still working then. When do you get back?
Dad: Middle of
September. When will you be in England?
Me: I booked a
flight home for August 31st, but if I get this other job that I’m
waiting to hear from, I leave again September 15th.
Dad: Damn. I fly
back into the country on the 16th.
Me: So I won’t see
you til you’re back for Christmas then?
Dad: No. I guess
not. If you do get that job you’ll be closer to China than to England, though. Hey! Why
don’t you get the boat across to me and see me there?
Me: Dad. I have to
go now. You’re creeping me out.
And
then I got off of that Skype call and had to take a vodka shot and Google
pictures of Ryan Gosling in my five-minute alone time in order to shake off how surreal talking like that with Dad was.
We’re a modest, hard-working family who holidayed in package tours to places close to home when we were growing up. We don’t just pop to Taiwan on the way to the shops.
Except
that now, it seems, we do.
Aaagh. I feel so small and dainty. I just booked a trip to New Zealand for two whole weeks in their summertime and I'm all, "26 hours getting there, including seven hours laid over in Fiji, in the dark? Really?" I can't explain it. I can't condone it. But travel makes me all sparky in a bad way. I am not bashful in life and I happen to live in a place I'd gladly spend a lifetime exploring if I lived elsewhere--so I'm doing it here, while I'm here--but the idea of mixing it up on the planet makes me all jangly. I am not excusing myself. I also think it's pathetic. And they speak English in NZ. Or something a lot like it.
ReplyDelete@Murr- but that isn't the point, is it? I mean, I think the point is not that we are scared, but that we are scared and do these things anyway. I get teary every time I travel, but I know I can't let it stop be because the trade- seeing places like NZ (which I'm so uber-jealous of you for!) and travelling alone and sometimes being a bit lost- is totally worth it when you can say, I DID IT! My dad calls it expanding your zone of comfort. I call it being brave with your life so that others can be brave with theirs :) Have an awesome trip!x
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