Travel? Resilience? Parenting? Counting backpacks? When you talk about travel and resilience there is a definite chicken and egg problem. Does travel require resilience or does it develop it? Hopefully both!
Being strong, adaptable, and able recover from inevitable breakdowns is something of a prerequisite for travel — at least for interesting, adventurous travel. You don’t wander all day through the streets of Dublin with little/no sleep, climb a country’s tallest mountain, or risk losing a non-swimmer child in Venice’s canals without some level of resilience. Likewise, traveling can’t help but build those same qualities.
Right?
Looking back, the trip through Dublin was a great chance for us to develop some psychological strength. We landed way too early, took the wrong bus, walked for miles with our backpacks through the streets, couldn’t find our AirBnB for the longest time, and only in the late afternoon had the view of some beds. In the interest of strength/masochism we decided to nap for forty-five minute, drag ourselves out of bed, hit two or three museums, go out to dinner, and then, only then, get some real sleep. I wouldn’t have done it any other way. I think. At the time it was kind of painful — but in a good strength-building way.
Climbing Carrantouhil — now, there’s a story of resilience. We should probably have heeded the tell-tale signs given by all of the people coming down the mountain in the afternoon when we decided to start up it. We should probably have noticed that they had actual cold weather gear, whereas we simply had socks on our hands and long-sleeve shirts wrapped around our heads. In our defense, it’s not a very big mountain. Anyway, when everyone was more or less soaked to the bone and only one was audibly crying—though I think we were all crying a little bit on the inside—we recognized a need to adapt. That is to say, we gave up, but we gave up gracefully. We decided to celebrate the spot we had reached, declaring it to be “Little Carrantouhil.” We celebrated with s’ mores, well not real s’ mores, we had to adapt there, too. We had sour cream and chive crackers, figs, and chocolate, which is kind of like s’ mores if you’re really tired and hungry. By adapting thus, we lived to travel another day.
It’s hard to think of an example of a breakdown more significant than losing your child, especially in a foreign country. At that moment when you realize your child is not along your side or where you expected them to be, you have little option except to realize you have completely and utterly failed in the number one objective of parenting—simply keeping your child safe. So you drop your backpack and start running in ever-widening circles with lots of self-recrimination running through your head. You comfort yourself with the thought, “he has really short legs so how far can he possibly get?!?” We eventually found him (otherwise we would be the Sad Four Backpack Family) chatting amiably with some very kind Italian women who spoke beautifully accented English.
Why are we blathering on about the strength, adaptability, and recovery needed to travel? Is it because we wanted to share some of our lives’ more terrifying and embarrassing moments with you to be truthful? Sure. Is it because we wrote a book called Resilience Parenting and it is now available on Amazon? Definitely. Check it out!
I had a brief period of walkabout in my life, and what I loved about traveling was that it was a kind of second childhood: an era of freewheeling curiosity, fear, wonder, and adaptation. It would seem to me, then, that kids make the best travelers.
So far that rings true. They radiate curiosity and seem to be able to adapt to anything. We’re just trying to keep up!
Tom, I’m just now reading these beautifully crafted words. Write more! It’s so wonderful to connect with you again.