California Dreaming

Enjoying Cousin Wyatt
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By Dan

One more morning in a hotel room. One more taxi to a train station. One more trip through an airport. One more (very long) plane flight. And then we were home to grandparents, friends, family, familiar sights and sounds, and the reality of the next phase of our lives. Grayson jokingly commented as we were driving around on the first day home, “Dad, it’s so weird – everybody looks like a tourist here!” After about seven months of being in a world of brown, black, and yellow skins, it was definitely strange to see so many white folks in one place, and actually working instead of just being tourists. And, my goodness, people sure speak English well here, and with remarkably little in the way of accents. But, it immediately struck me how much of a melting pot Northern California is, as I saw people everywhere who looked like the people we saw while traveling – the same collection of browns, blacks, and yellows are here in full force.

Slip and slide!
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So, what to say in this (maybe) last entry? The four of us did some lists of bests/worsts/favorites/etc., and it was fun to see what stuck out in each of our minds. Lots of variety, but some places and names kept showing up. Rather than making this a greatest hits entry, though, I’ll tackle some of the obvious questions:

Am I glad we did it, and would I do it again? Absolutely. It was harder than I expected, both before (the planning and preparation) and during (the planning and implementation), but I suppose most of the good things in life do not come easily. When we’re in our rocking chairs at the retirement home and look back on our lives, I know that Christina and I will place this trip very high on the list of interesting, exciting, life enriching, and notable things that we have done. We learned so much about each other as members of a family, and shared so many fascinating, wonderful, and lousy experiences, that it can’t help but pull us closer. The patchwork quilt that is our collective life has so many more colorful squares in it now than it did nine months ago. One of the best things to be reminded of was how compatible Christina and I are – we had a great time bonding on this trip, and really enjoyed each other’s company and shared approach to travel. It’s nice to get a chance to freshen a relationship after 15 or 20 years.

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What did I learn? Hmm . . . . If you’re going to lose your ATM card, have a copy of your bank account number somewhere accessible. Grayson is a slob when it comes to his duffel bag, but he is a real trooper of a traveler. Abby is a walking encyclopedia of animal behavior, but she still doesn’t like a lot of different kinds of food. Christina is truly the Energizer Bunny, but she does need her feet rubbed from time to time. Seriously, though, I think I learned that kids are kids, and you can point them in certain directions, but you do need to sit back and let them do what they’re going to do, because you can’t control things too much. And kids are truly sponges, sucking up knowledge, experiences, and views at a rate that puts that of adults to shame. Of course, they also suck up dribbled ice cream, random rocks and ticket stubs, and dirty laundry at an equally astonishing rate.

What did the kids learn? This might be the toughest question to answer, because so much of what they learned is now buried deep in their souls. They did learn that the world is much, much more than a middle class suburb of Northern California. They learned to communicate with and enjoy the company of all sorts of different kinds of people. Some of my proudest moments were watching the kids sit around chatting with such a wide range of people: Australian backpackers, Maasai warriors, Italian and Ethiopian and Laotian kids, Swiss retirees, Indonesian sailors, etc. For kids who were reluctant to go buy a popsicle on their own last summer, they really have blossomed in their self-confidence and their ability to communicate. They learned to express themselves and argue their positions much better, thanks to all of the time that we had as a family to talk about things. Of course, I didn’t always agree with them, but how nice it is that they are willing to take a side and support it. All of the lawyer genes floating around in their DNA seem to be showing their presence – these two will certainly argue until they’re blue in the face!

Another important thing that the kids absorbed was the value of education. American kids seem to think of school as a necessary evil, or something that you just have to do. Throughout much of the world, we saw kids who would go to extraordinary lengths to get to school, and families that would make huge sacrifices to get them there. Somehow, I can’t see many American kids who would walk barefoot 4 or 5 miles in the desert to get to school every day, or American families that would devote a huge chunk of their available income to paying for school uniforms and fees. We’re incredibly lucky, but we take it for granted. In fact, that idea of taking things for granted may be the most important thing that the kids learned. Having seen how the other half (actually, make that the other 98%) lives, I don’t think that they will take quite so much for granted in the future. And, that’s a very good thing.

What was a surprise? Naively, I thought that the parenting side of things would be a lot easier than it was, with 24/7 access to the kids and a host of new experiences in front of us every day. In fact, parenting is parenting, and it’s still tough, and the full assortment of carrots and sticks that most of us use as part of our parenting just isn’t available on the road. I’d like to figure out how to be less dependent on those carrots and sticks, but it isn’t easy. Also naively, I thought that the kids would still appreciate 24/7 access to us. In fact, they didn’t, and we needed to create more and better ways to give everyone some personal space. Again, not easy when on the road.

What would I do differently? I’ve had some nagging guilt about the amount of formal schoolwork we did with the kids. The overall volume of stuff they learned this year far exceeds what they would have learned in class (no offense, Miss Erker!), but apart from math, which we were all good about, the formal stuff was sort of neglected. So, I would have devoted more time pre-departure to putting together writing projects, and maybe science lesson plans, that were sufficiently self-contained that we could just pull them out at the appropriate times and do them. Also, part of me thinks that it would have been good to give the kids more input on where we were going and what we were doing. At the very least, in retrospect we should have shared the detailed itinerary and day to day plans with the kids on a regular basis, so they would have a better idea of what to expect. Finally, part of me thinks that we tried to do too much, and would have been better off parking ourselves places for more 2 week stretches. But, when I think about where those spots might have been, and all of the other places we would have had to miss, I can’t reconcile it all. For us, the seemingly constant movement was the way to go.

What will stay with us from the trip? The time we spent together (did I mention, we were really together!?) means that we all know each other so much better now than we did before. It isn’t all good, of course, but that knowledge of what makes your kids, your spouse, and you tick is so very important. The awareness of what’s out there in the world, and how lucky we are to be where we are, is something that Christina and I had from prior travels, but the kids had to a much lesser extent. I think they now have that awareness in abundance. I hope that the kids follow through on a lot of the things they talked about while traveling, and do more to help others as a way of sharing that good fortune. Finally, the time we spent together (did I mention, we were really together!?) has built up a huge reservoir of shared experiences, memories, family jokes, and discussion topics that will keep us going for decades. Apologies in advance to those of you who will have to put up with the weird idiosyncracies and stuff that we have developed together.

Finally, let me say thanks to all of you who kept us going with words of encouragement and support along the way. Whether we met you on the road, or have known you for decades, we really appreciated all that people said and did for us. The “how lucky we are” theme has seemed to run through much of what I’ve written today, and it’s the friends (old and new) and family that really are at the foundation of how lucky we are. Hopefully, we’ll be able to share with others some of our learning and experiences, both on a serious level (let’s talk about solving the issue of clean water in the world) and on a fun level (can I tell you about the time we. . .). So, again, thanks, and we’ll be seeing you out there somewhere. Oh, and by the way, since Christina and I are currently unemployed, if you hear of anybody who is looking for a lawyer to hire, let us know!