It is the job of our parents to worry.
Concern seeps out in their texts as we make our way home at night. They fret as we do things far less risky than anything they pulled when they were our age. No matter how old you become, their worry probably never stops. Not least when you announce you’re going travelling, without them, often halfway across the world.
But nothing can replace setting off on your own for the first time – so parents, you must let us go.
I’ve always been a gap year advocate, and while there were negotiations, there was never a question (at least in my mind) that I was going. It is a privilege to be able to call the world your oyster. I worked and saved for years in the lead-up, helped by generous donations from slightly apprehensive family members at the pointy end.
Many Australians flock overseas after completing their final high school exams, taking up gigs as tutors in schools across the UK, going on adventures with friends, or – every mother’s worst nightmare – embarking on an alcohol-fuelled Contiki tour.
While soaring air fares have diminished the opportunity to travel for some teens, even before cozzie livs became a buzzword for cost of living it was hard enough losing money in dollar-pound-euro conversions before having to face the fact that places such as Poundland were now your friends. And then came the pandemic, crippling the gappie dreams of Gen Zs ready to find their way out from behind the screen.
I had lofty dreams of doing the Camino de Santiago. The idea of me walking an 800km pilgrimage alone at 18, in possibly inclement weather and with only a basic grasp on the language, was quickly stamped out. I am older, wiser and fitter now, and one day I will enjoy it far more. Instead, for the first three months of my trip, I au paired two Spanish children, one who had no interest in learning English unless chocolate was involved and the other who fulfilled every trope of a nine-year-old too grown up to need a nanny. They both cried when I left, but it hadn’t been an easy road.
Adjusting to living in someone else’s house was a culture shock in every sense. It became the small things that confused me, like the fact that Spain seemingly goes without two of my main comforts in life – tea and porridge. There wasn’t even a kettle in the house I stayed in.
I Skyped Mum a lot during that time, riddled with what was definitely homesickness. But I also relished in being 40 minutes away from Madrid and having every weekend free to travel the country. I remember both aspects equally as fondly because, even though I was halfway across the world, I knew there was someone who wanted to know all about my day just as much as I want to tell it. That, and the fact I could complain about having to “boil” my water in the microwave.
Being overseas as a young person are the times you learn, flourish and find out what you love and hate. When you’re in a different time zone to home and have less access to to the internet, you must make your own decisions. You have to find ways to stretch your budget, be responsible for where you sleep every night, take a gamble of when to get off the bus, decide what looks safe and what doesn’t and sometimes (though hopefully not too often) get it all wrong.
When you eventually move out of home, you may not find yourself as homesick (I shed more tears in a hostel in Bath than in my dorm room), and making friends with strangers may help you strike up more scintillating conversation at university. When you plan your next holiday, you will remember it’s always good to have an old-fashioned map to hand – just in case your phone dies – and you might be inspired to learn a language so that you can ask more questions before being led astray.
Parents talk about how nerve-racking it is letting their children travel, but many also express surprise when, after their children fly the nest, they talk to them more than they did when they lived in the same four walls. It’s still nice to send postcards but every parent in the digital age can rest a little easier knowing we don’t have to sit in internet cafes or find phone booths to send home an update.
Just like knowing when to use the emergency credit card, we know when to call you. Moreover, we want to. When there is a moment that will only excite you, we will probably reroute to find a cafe with wifi so we can talk to you in real time. When we triumph, (like when I was accused of fraud by a Spanish train conductor for buying the wrong ticket fare and had to talk my way out of it – challenging but not impossible, as it turns out) we will find a way to tell you that we were in fact in control the whole time.
It may be a cliche, but “finding yourself” is undoubtedly something that going it alone is guaranteed to give you – be it a weekend, a month or a year. Hit the road.
Parents may have the toughest job in the world, and we cannot rob them of their worry. But they must also let us swing from the trapeze, just so we know they’re always there to catch us.
As for any mischief you want to keep to yourself? Well, what they don’