Atlantica - 01.04.2006, Page 34

32 AT L A N T I CA
on the fly
I have three kids – a 13-year-old and
5-year-old twins. I’ve always been
a traveler, and when I first became
pregnant, everyone said, “Ahh, that
will be an end to the silly wandering.”
But when you have one child you
can throw them on your back and
wander around the world and it’s no
problem. A few years later, when I
fell pregnant again, my friends said,
“Ahh, that will be an end to the silly
wandering.” Now, sometimes I take
my 13 year old, and sometimes I take
my twins, but most often I take all of
them.
Before I had children I had always
traveled alone. When you travel
alone, people are much more likely to
talk to you and you’re more likely to
make friends. If you travel with your
boyfriend, you get cut off because
people see you as a unit. But if you
travel with your child, people talk to
your child and your child becomes an
introduction to other worlds, rather
than a barrier to it.
For example, when I went to West
Hollywood with my eldest daughter,
we were sitting in a classic West
Hollywood diner and Robert Downey
Jr. sat down at the table next to us.
I was all cut up and couldn’t say a
word to him. But he just came over
and started talking to my daughter.
So as a result of my daughter, I had
a conversation with Robert Downey
Jr., which I would never have done
if I was sitting there alone. Children
can break the ice in a way that adults
can’t.
I also think there’s a lot of fuss
made with kids and food. I’ve just
returned from Malaysia, and if I said,
“Would you like satay?” my children
would say no. But if I offered them
a “chicken lollipop” then they’d say,
“Great.” In China, Peking duck with
cucumber and pancake is a kids’ meal
if ever there was one because they
have to construct it. They love all that.
I have seen parents in India with their
kids and they sit down at the table
and warn their children about how
spicy it is. Whereas if you sit down
with it and sound excited (“Ooh, look
at that rice, and wouldn’t you like
some gravy on it?”), then you end up
eating rice with curry.
It’s different when your kids get
older. You have always taken them
with you, but when they get older,
they see it as their journey as much
as yours. And teens are dead into
kit and clothes. I’m a very minimalist
traveler. An empty yogurt pot is a toy
for a young child, but teens have to
have 10 million changes of clothes
and that fussiness really gets in the
way of real traveling and can become
really irritating.
Another downside about traveling
with children is that you’re not sexy.
A kind of ‘mumsiness’ is completely
in the forefront, and that’s good in
many ways, but in other ways there
is something very sensuous about
traveling and that goes a bit because
you are sensuous as a person. The
‘mumsiness’ takes the edginess off it,
and the edginess is sometimes quite
exciting.
But I think sometimes we are lulled
into the idea that because you are
traveling with kids, somehow you’re
safe. I was walking along the beach
in Copacabana, pushing a double
buggy, and a man came over and
pushed me and stole my money. The
instinct that kicks in at that moment is
very interesting. I became the traveler
rather than the parent – I ended up
chasing this man for quite a while
trying to get my money back and then
I realized that I had left my baby twins
behind me in the buggy. When you’re
traveling, you’re part traveler and part
parent, but when a certain moment
comes, my traveler kicked in and the
parent momentarily disappeared.
Lots of parents wonder what
the point is in taking very small
children to foreign places. They won’t
remember anything about it. It’s true
that my twins have no memory of
being momentarily abandoned in
Brazil, but already at five they have
this incredible sense that the world is
an incredibly rich and diverse place.
And that is a fabulous thing for small
children to learn. a
Dea Birkett is a travel journalist and writer
based in the UK. www.deabirkett.com
CONFESSIONS OF A TRAVELING PARENT
by Dea Birkett as told to Eliza Reid
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009 airmail Atlantica 306.indd 32 24.4.2006 18:18:43