When you grown up with a dad who’s a expat for an international oil company and a mom who takes up travel blogging for HuffPost, chances are you’ve been around the world a bit, and stayed in some pretty swanky hotels. Some might even say you’re privileged. By some, I mean everyone, and the privileged children, they’re mine. There is no doubt that the adjective accurately describes their upbringing.
No one wants to have spoiled kids though, so we’ve made sure to balance their privilege with a heavy dose of culture. Living in Asia meant they’ve potty trained on less than ideal squat toilets and those formative years spent in Africa have shaped them in ways that make me regularly smile.
The Travel Effect
While we lived overseas I became passionately obsessed with writing. I was writing about my personal experiences, which my husband didn’t love because I’m an over-sharer. We were travelling every 6 weeks when the kids were on school holidays. Eventually, it dawned on me that I could combine my passion of travel with my love of oversharing, through words.
“Why have I not been travel writing?!” I asked my husband in shock that I hadn’t thought of it sooner.
He told me he had thought about that about 6 months earlier but hadn’t said anything in fear of it highjacking our travels.
The travel writing chapter of my life was one of my favourite seasons to date! I have incredible memories of being next-level pampered as I reviewed some of the world’s best spas in Hong Kong, Dubai and Switzerland. We took the kids to private luxury beach huts in Bali and had rooms with personal pools in Thailand. I treated my parents to a weekend at the iconic Ritz Hotel in London, where we were guests to a dinner that could pay my current mortgage for two months. This time in my life was like an alternate universe, and my kids were along for the ride.
They knew about butlers, first class lounges and turn down service. They were experiencing things that blew my adult mind, but it felt perfectly normal to them. Hotels would spell out their names in foam letters in the bathtub, or have monogramed cookies on their nightstand, awaiting their arrival as if they were royalty.
It was very different from the life they were about to know in the developing world they were moving to.
The Africa Effect
No mall, no soft play centres, trampoline parks or splash pads. When you’re growing up in Africa, you make your own fun. We were lucky enough to be near the beach for two years in Congo so we played in the sand.
It was where privilege met culture as we would grab some meat from a local butcher, swing by the market for any last minute things we needed, then head up the coast to our ‘case’, or beach house if you’re anglophone. The drive there consisted of me holding onto the ‘holy shit handles’ on the inside of the SUV for dear life, while the girls squealed in delight in the backseat as their dad lived out his off-roading dreams down red dirt roads with giant pot holes full of mud splashing up either side of the vehicle, turning our white Foretuner the colour of African soil. Friends would often drive in convey, ready to tow out any vehicle that got stuck along the way. It was an adventure for the young and old.
At the beach, adults would have a few ‘koolaids’, semi regularly there’d be an actual pig roasted, and the day would be spent with kids running around on the beach with their friends, playing in the sand and picking mangos from the trees. This was life. Simple and good.
Coming to Canada
The play centre at the mall was for kids 5 years and under but most of the toddlers playing there were crawling around on all fours, in diapers. My daughter didn’t care. Apparently she had never seen anything so exciting and she wanted go in the Market Mall play centre even though she was nearly 7. Most Canadian kids her age would have been SO over it, almost embarrassed at the idea of been seen in there. But upon arrival to her new life in Canada, my daughter was almost in tears when she was turned away, to the point where the lady working at the desk saw this, and let her go in under the instructions that she would just go look around and not climb on the structures cause she was too big. She jumped on the opportunity…but not on the play structures, because she was over the height restriction.
This phenomenon didn’t, and hasn’t, stopped at the kids play area at the mall. It has extended itself to story time at the library, play school plastic tricycles, and my parents basement.
My Well Travelled Immigrants
Covid-19. It’s marked 2020 in history and it’s turned the world’s summer plans upside down, the Webb family, right there in the upturn.
Instead of getting on an airplane for an adventure, we took it down a notch this year and on a whim I announced that I was going to take the girls on an across Canada road trip by myself while my husband worked. Declaration of our road trip stemmed from a mix of lock-down boredom and the economy having me wonder if we’d be moving from Canada again soon, because in our house, you just never know. I have gotten used to pushing myself out of my comfort zone, and now I crave that challenge if life gets too stagnant. So there was some internal chess there, wondering if I could pull it off on my own.
My 76 year old father was along for the ride, as we ventured out to bring him back to the house I grew up in, 22 hours, and 4 provinces away.
From the drivers seat, I cracked a coconut La Croix water and poured it into my giant water bottle with a straw, making me think of my husband who always asks why I drink from a sippy-cup. At the sound of the can opening and liquid being poured, I could hear Océane giggling in the backseat.
“What’s so funny?” I wondered as we rolled on down the never ending straight highway of Saskatewan.
“I forgot where I was. I’m strapped in like an airplane and when I heard the sound of that can opening and pouring out, I thought you were the lady on an airplane. I was going to ask for apple juice.”
What a thing to be triggered by. You know you spend a lot of time on a plane when the sound of a soda can opening makes you think you’re flying.
I laughed along with her and we drove for what seemed like a never ending amount of time, until we reached our hotel.
The thing about travelling with someone in their late 70’s, that has done the same trip numerous amounts of times, is that they tend to be set in their ways. To make things as smooth as possible, I forwent discussion and just went along with my Dad’s routine of stopping at certain gas stations that he preferred, and staying at the same hotel he always stayed at.
This meant that instead of luxury 5 star at a bucket list location, we’d be spending the night at the budget friendly, uber affordable, Super 8 Hotel on the side of the highway. I could almost hear my invisible crown ping as it slid from my head and bounced off the ground.
I can do this.
I wasn’t raised in luxury 5 star, but man was it easy to get used to!! I reminded myself of my regular mantra: You’ve done harder. If you can live in the Congo, you can do this.
You’d be surprised at how applicable that phrase is to almost all aspects of my life.
Once I got over myself, my mind went directly to my kids. I said a quick silent prayer to anyone listening that my kids wouldn’t be spoiled about it, or say out-loud the things I might have been silently thinking in my head.
They made me so proud by how much more adaptable they were than I was myself. I took their lead on this one.
Out of the mouths of babes, “This isn’t a very high hotel?”
It wasn’t a judgment or criticism, rather, a statement from genuine surprise that it was only two floors. Kind of like the first time she saw a modest Canadian church, after only knowing churches like Notre Dame and Sagrada Familia. She stated, “This is the church?” And my Mom could only laugh as her Euro granddaughter innocently noticing the obvious contrast.
The girls ran into the Super 8 and to my relief, loved it like it was the Four Seasons.
“It smells so clean in here!”
That was the chlorine of the pool that they wouldn’t be swimming in because of covid, but they didn’t even care. After four months at home, they were thrilled to just be able to jump on the beds of a hotel.
After another long day of driving we landed at my parents house; the house I grew up in, full of memories, and the familiarity of knowing exactly where the squeaks in the floor were brought me right back home.
When the girls ran around discovering the house, I was once again reminded, and relieved, that kids are adaptable. They follow your lead…unless of course you’re at the Super 8 and you’re following theirs. I was happy to be home, which meant they were happy to be home. It didn’t matter that it took 22 hours to get there. They thought my parents’ bungalow was the most magical place on earth. No need for Disney World here, my daughter actually said, “Baba, your house is so big, I need a map!” And then they continued to explore the house that I could walk through with my eyes closed.
They went to the basement to discover stashed away toys and memories swept through me of my later years in the house. I would try to be quiet as I loudly came in way past curfew and sleep downstairs so I’d be undisturbed in the morning while I slept off my fun.
And as my daughters at almost 7 and 9 year olds happily pulled out 80’s toys that I played with at 2 or 3 years old, I was brought back to our Africa days. My kids missed the stage of going to their grandparents and playing with my old toys when they were 3, so they’re doing it now, slightly too old for the vintage toys they’re playing with but they couldn’t be happier.
That night one of my best expat friends posted a picture of her son, the same age, using virtual reality goggles in their living room. I couldn’t help but laugh that my daughter was thrilled to be using a View-Master.
These third culture kids can literally go from the Ritz to the Super 8. Their privilege is balanced by culture and experience. They can navigate both: turn-down service leaving chocolate on their pillow at night, as well as water and electricity cuts where the generator doesn’t kick in for hours. They’ve seen poverty and luxury and are lucky enough to live somewhere in the middle. They’re blessed with not carrying judgement or expectations of the people or places they live. Instead they extend acceptance, kindness and adaptablity.
Their cross culture experiences can teach me a few lessons as I walk through life alongside them. And for that, I couldn’t be more proud of my two favourite humans.