TRAVEL
My Cheerful Young Travel Companion
We had fun on the camping trip, and despite some uncertainty, discomfort, and adversity, you handled it all with ease. (Letters to my daughter)
Dear daughter,
We’ve just returned from a multi-week trip that included over 30-hour non-stop journeys by car and ship. You are not yet four years old and handled it like a champ.
- Six-hour drive? No problem.
- Thirty-plus-hour boat ride, with multiple complications, rescheduling, sleeping for no more than one to three hours at a time, often on the floor of a nasty ferry like a little vagabond or in the car? No problem.
- No proper meals, eating nothing but scrapes, some bread, and sweets? No problem.
- Sleeping in a small tent, on a yoga mat, as our air mattress died? No problem.
- Walking for miles on end, in the heat, up some steep hills, no less? No problem.
Before I became a father, I wondered what having a child would do to my traveling outings, as I harbor an avid love of adventure. Thus far, you’ve been great company and a very adaptable travel buddy, dear one.
While I can’t travel on two wheels as much as I would have liked, your presence, charm, and endearing company make up for the difference and then some. As far as I’m concerned, you’ve got a permanent ticket for my travels. You seem to enjoy it, as well.
This trip was fun but also challenging. Traveling for over thirty hours is never the easiest affair, but it’s one you simply must endure if you want to get somewhere. Some things kept being postponed, and the public transportation, in this case, a ship, was a huge disappointment. Still, it got us to our destination, even if we were a little dirty, tired, hungry, and fed up with the smells. I need to disinfect everything!
While you slept like a baby on the floor of a ferry and in our tent, I must admit I sometimes struggled to let go of my need to watch over you and your mother. What can I say — I am nothing if not a protector and a control freak at heart, so sleeping under a tree when a windstorm was loudly thrashing all around us, wondering if something was going to drop on your pretty little head, or closing my eyes when my two favorite beings on this planet were sleeping on an open floor of a ship filled with thousands of strangers, was a bit of a challenge.
Herein lies the lesson I was contemplating at this time — sometimes, you just need to let go, stop thinking, and accept that some things are out of your control.
Be it the raging weather over your head, being trapped in a giant metal can with suspicious strangers, or having your travel plans constantly averted to no fault of your own. You do the best you can with what you know and let go of the rest.
It’s an adventure, after all, and when on an adventure, it’s best to surrender to the flow and see where the current will take you, trusting not in your ability to control the universe but in your ability to handle whatever will come your way. Calmly, collectedly, and with unrelenting resolve that all will be well in the end.
I wanted to write this letter to you, hoping never to forget that even after being transported across a foreign country, with countless adaptations and uncertainty, being woken up at three in the morning, waiting for hours at the ferry terminal at night, and then sleeping on the floor for a few hours at a time during the day, eating scraps, and, more or less, just wasting time on a sad excuse of a ship, you warmed our hearts with the following words before you went to sleep (on the floor in the common room): “I had a really nice time, today.”
I had a lovely time, too, my darling daughter. Let’s do this again — soon!
Love, Dad.
PS: For those in doubt whether you can travel with your young kids — you can, and it’s a lot more fun, although some adjustments have to be made, and the fear factor of your adventure might go up a bit when caring for a young, innocent soul transversing an unknown land.
You can find more similar letters to my daughter here. They are not aimed only at her but are my way of talking to all the daughters of the world.
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