Ten Years Gone

When we were on the road, 10 years ago, I wrote almost every day. As a consequence, most times I sat down in front of the laptop, the sentences flowed naturally and easily. So please bear with me as I restart this cold engine, and blog for the first time in many years.

On this day, in 2007, Letizia, Nina, Sara and I began an 8-month adventure/risk/psychotic break (delete as appropriate). I know that this happened not just because I was there (this is in fact my weakest evidence), not just because there is documentary evidence on this blog, but also because every day I am living downstream of its effects. Last night, the four of us sat around the kitchen table in Cagliari to eat dinner, and Letizia asked the girls if it had been a good experience. This might seem like a pointless question with an obvious answer, but if you read the blog entry from 10 years ago, describing the night before we left, you'll note that the girls' cousins tried to hide Nina and Sara under their beds when the time came to say goodbye to everyone. Having more or less the same age, and very much the same perspective on the whole round-the-world undertaking, they all arrived naturally to the same question: Why?

Being a parent is an exercise in failure. It's too complex a role for anyone to do right the first time around. Or the fifty-first. And just when you think you've learned something useful, the role changes and you are instantly demoted from expert to idiot. I'd like to say that Letizia and I knew the answer to the question 'Why?'. We certainly had theories, which we followed with a certainty they didn't deserve. We would have told Nina and Sara that we wanted to show them a little more of the world they had (recently!) been born into. That there was much to see, learn and experience. But really, we didn't know. The phrase that comes to mind would sit better on a headstone than on an inspirational poster: It seemed like a good idea at the time. But was it?

So back to the kitchen table. Nina is now 18 - an adult for goodness sake!! Sara is 16 and is probably more entitled to be called an adult than her dad ever will be. Be aware that these young people are careful with their words, and they have a view on the world that is significantly different from mine or their mother's. They don't give points away for free. Did they think it was a good experience? Emphatically yes. Why? Well, even they aren't sure. They point to some of their own traits and ascribe them at least in part to our travels. A certain openness to other ways of being. A suspicion of national stereotypes. Now that they are coming of age, the fact that so many of their friends are dotted around the planet seems less of an obstacle now. They are ready for more travel. Nina feels like she barely knows Europe, and is hatching plans for an Interrail. Sara is toying with the idea of university in various European countries.

Maybe these traits would have developed even in the absense of The Trip. As Robert Plant sang in Led Zeppelin's 'Ten Years Gone':

Though the course may change sometimes
Rivers always reach the sea

I don't know why. Ask me when another 10 years have gone.