Odyssey

There's been radio silence.

There's a reason for it. Every couple of years, we take the kids on what has become a traditional odyssey of sorts.

To date, our odysseys have been to the North American continent and this one was no different.

It was meant to herald the beginning of Muffin's primary school life. We did a similar one to Hawaii when the twins were entering primary school.

Our vacation this time was unabashedly non-educational. There was going to be no value in it in terms of exposing them to new lands, new cultures, geography or scenery. We went with one intention; to go on the Disney Cruise, which itself was just about indulgence and comfort. Add on to that, being in the theme park city of the world, we spent the rest of our time in theme parks, riding roller coasters and soaking in everything make believe and computer generated. In other words, we did not go to the United States, we went on a themepark holiday.

But JED had a great time as did we. And it wasn't true that they didn't learn anything. This trip was a first for them in many ways.

1. They had to look after themselves and they did so in a myriad of ways.
In Orlando, they slept in the upstairs bedroom while we were downstairs. They were in charge of getting themselves ready in the morning without any prompting. Many a morning, they appeared at my bedroom door all ready to head to the parks.

2. They had to look after each other.
On occasion, we would leave them alone to get groceries, get dinner and even do a spot of shopping. My paranoid imagination had them fighting and hurting each other or me coming home to a house on fire. But none of that played up. They watched TV, cleared the table at the designated time (as monitored by Evan), brought everything into the kitchen with no mess and nothing broken (supervised by Jordan) and then trooped up to wash up (closely watched by a hawk-like Muffin).

3. They looked after their own things.
For children who have a helper in the house, they can be awfully spoilt and messy. But on vacation and with my declaration that I wasn't going to pick up after them, after the nth time they were unable to find their toys or their pyjamas smelt funky because they left them in a pile together with a wet towel, almost everything got folded away or put away nicely. It wasn't perfect but it was good enough.

Granted, there was the non-Facebook- non Disneyfied version. That included
a) a bout of food poisoning which required a jab and quarantine
b) a hacking cough (that lasted all holiday and made it back 3 continents)
c) bad food (Poor Chinaman Muffin had nothing much to eat except for fries, hash browns, sausages and chicken tenders and even that got old quite quickly)
d) the occasional bad weather (either too hot or too cold)
e) too much walking causing exhausted, painful feet, whiny children too heavy to carry
g) bad airport queues causing us to almost miss on flights on multiple occasions
f) 13 hour long transatlantic flights with our girl child who was unable to sleep, kept throwing up and eventually only settled sleeping on the cabin floor at the back of the plane.

But even then, we miss it.

So, posterity, the a video that JED and Packrat worked very hard to make.



It'll be a holiday we all will be talking about for a long time to come.

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Capturing freedom

As a child I hated being in front of a crowd.

I always feared being embarrassed. I was always self-conscious.  I don't think I dared to speak in public. My voice would tremble and crack. And not until I went to uni and had to do a VIVA, did I dare to speak in front of an audience. After that, I haven't been all that fazed. I ended up choosing a career that required me to stand in front of people and speak or teach. Call the VIVA the baptism of fire.

I cannot remember whether or not there was a time, as a child, that I didn't fear being embarrassed.

Slowly, the twins are becoming old enough to understand what embarrassment means. So that means they have become a little bit more self-conscious.

But generally, they are a lot less fearful of being in front of a crowd than both Packrat and I were; though more so Jordan and Muffin.

Evan is the closest template to us. The other two just belt out tunes, ham it up for all and sundry to watch.

Muffin has no qualms being in front of his class, talking about what ever strange item he chose to bring to school that day. Jordan loves performing and she has a mega-watt smile for the crowd. Evan, if he has rehearsed enough pulls off a pretty good show even if he tells me later that he was actually very very scared.

Thankfully for pre-schooler performers, the critics are not as demanding and harsh. We've all had one of those critics in our lives (occasionally our teachers), who have told us that it was wrong to colour the ocean green, mocked us when we tried to speak up or plain laughed at us because it was such a ludicrous thought, whatever we were suggeting.  Hopefully, whatever freedom they've felt just singing, waving their arms and speaking in front of a crowd, will be the beginning of courage to stand in front of others and be heard, as they grow older.

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Capturing Concentration

At 3 or at 6, even the simplest things are difficult. It's very easy to give up. It might be figuring out how to tie the laces on a sneaker (Evan), hold the stencil still enough so that the picture you draw isn't wobbly (Muffin) or trying not to fall off the balance beam even if it is 4 inches above the ground (Jordan).

We keep telling them to keep at it. So they do, albeit reluctantly at times. And when they do try, the look of concentration and focus on their faces makes me want to shush everything around them while silently waving pom poms for them.

I am glad I caught these three snapshots. I put it together into a  collage to remind them of how hard they worked and when they eventually got it right (and all 3 did eventually) how it made it all the more worthwhile.

I didn't include those pictures, the victory and immense satisfaction ones because those are memories easily remembered. These ones, they will forget, especially when it becomes second nature to them.

But it will probably do them good if, in an existential and contemplative mood one day, they wondered how was it that they had figured out all these supposedly simple things and recalled the sheer grit they had to have had to go from "I don't know how to do this" to "I can do this with my eyes closed". And the revelation that if they could do that at 3 or 6, where ever they would be in life at that point, they could probably summon up the same grit to overcome what ever they needed to.

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Capturing Wonderment

When I was on vacation with my mom and my brother, we inadvertently started talking about our childhood memories. What struck me was that the memories that we had were mostly about things that weren't really meaningful to anyone else but us.

Anyway, since this blog is primarily for JED (for me too because my memory sucks), I'm going to endeavour to do a series of snapshots capturing some of the things that they might like to have memories and even photographs of.

Starting with things that made them go "WOW" in a hushed tone and be silent throughout the entire experience.

That was Muffin's reaction when we took him to an open field near where I work. Every evening and more so on Saturday mornings, there are these guys flying remote control planes. These planes were slightly under 3 feet long. The guys obviously had some part in building them, they tinker with them and the look on their faces when they manoeuvre the planes up into the sky is the same, unabashed look of wonderment that Muffin had on his face. They flew them as if the planes were part of the Red Arrows, flying inverted, doing barrel turns and twists in the air with shouts and whoops of glee.

Muffin was quiet and his face upturned the whole time. He asked no questions. He just watched. And slowly edged closer and closer to the nearest one of the guys tinkering with his plane. He didn't want to go. And when we did, he asked if he could bring Evan and Jordan back to see the planes. 

An old guy quipped to another as we were about to leave, 'Fly the plane low. Then you can see the beauty of it and enjoy it. Don't fly it too high, otherwise you might as well watch planes take off from Changi.'

Point taken.
Sense of wonderment? Check.

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