Introduction to the World

In a few days T and I will be going to South Africa for two weeks of what is officially known in the expat community here as "rest and recreation". Planning these two weeks has been anything but restful. I'm knee-deep in travel guides and pamphlets. I have 4 different maps, not one of them sufficient, and the number of hotels, wineries, and nature reserves to consider is dizzying. In short, I'm overwhelmed at the thought of having so many exciting things available to do, see and visit. West Africa is, for the most part, dull. But dullness can be a kind of comfort. You always know what to expect and you're never, ever, overwhelmed with choices, which for half a moment got me wondering why we were going to so much effort to leave. And then I remembered...

Once, long, long ago, my mother planned the family vacation to trump all family vacations. (Never mind that the absolute best and greatest family vacation there ever was or ever will be actually turned out, I am told, to be a lovely little trip to Montreal to which I was not invited - nay, even informed of until after the fact - but we'll let that pass. I guess that's what I get for skipping off to Europe.) Anyway, my parents got it into their heads that they wanted to go back to Colorado, back to the region that held 10 years of happy memories for them.

Thus weeks of pouring over brochures and maps, making reservations, booking this and booking that, and trying to squeeze every last penny out of the holiday budget commenced - tasks that, to the best of my knowledge, were completed by my mother and my mother alone. Of course we girls noticed none of this. Only vaguely aware that there were big plans looming on the horizon, we continued to lumber through our summer holidays making our own plans and dreaming our own dreams until we were told to pack our bags. When it came time to leave my mother, for all her efforts, met with outright rebellion.

I cannot remember a time of greater tension and stress among my family than that vacation. Somewhere, in the depths of a forgotten family photo album, is a snapshot of me and my two sisters sitting on a bench at a dock, strapped into life-jackets, and wearing scowls that were surely intended to shoot laser-beams from our eyes. We had been shaken out of the comfortable dullness of our usual existence and we didn't like it - and my mother was the one who'd done the shaking. It makes me smile to think that she had the humour and presence of mind, even then, to take that photograph.

To date, this is still the only major trip beyond the East Coast I have ever taken in the U.S. I would know nothing, as opposed to next to nothing, about my country if it weren't for my mother's determination to take us on that great, mythical family vacation. For the first time I was pushed into the realization that it's a big world and I'd only seen a small part.

Thank you, Mom, for pushing us. Thank you for putting up with us. Thank you for all the nights you sat up at the kitchen table, mapping out our introduction to the world.