Some praise for the people we leave behind

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My mother and father are a hardworking pair. My childhood was peppered with absences, short and long, while my parents traveled for work. Their returns were marked with exotic gifts for my brother and I; Russian dolls, Italian candies; tiny Japanese jewelry boxes. What’s more, in family gatherings, they would tell stories that would make my jaw drop; my mild, bookish father talking about a nuclear icebreaker he rode in Helsinki, or my shy mother getting praised for her drinking skills by French WHO workers in Paris. I think it was their travels that first made me curious about seeing the world. Not just because of the foreign trinkets that lined my bookshelf, but the proud, adventurous stories they brought back. As a shy, ever-nervous kid, I loved the idea of going to a new place and presenting a new self to the world. I imagined myself becoming as bold and fearless as I wanted, with my nerd status left far behind. 

As a university student, I took backpacking trips to Europe with my parents’ blessing, even when I traveled alone. After graduation, I packed up to go teach English in Thailand, a country I knew far too little about. My parents, ever-supportive, sent me cards and packages, even though in my dusty local post office, one in three items made it into the pockets of postal workers, not into my hands. Upon my return, we would go to Thai restaurants where they would bravely stomach the fiery spices of Thai cuisine.

Later, when I decided to teach in South Korea, they polled their friends for contacts, asking whose offspring had taught there, who knew what tips (in urban Ontario, everyone seems to know someone who has taught in Korea). In phone calls home, they would talk with surprising knowledge of the country, as though they had been researching my adopted home in their spare time. “You’re going to Busan for the weekend? That’s exciting, it’s on the coast of the Sea of Japan, right?” “I’m surprised you still see Chinese characters on temples, the hangul alphabet was introduced five centuries ago.”

I know that I’m lucky. I’ve met a lot of young expats and ESL teachers whose families want them close by at all times. Friends have moaned to me that their parents don’t support their ESL teaching, that they see travel as money wasted, that they get pressured to fly home every time Christmas or Thanksgiving comes around. My family, though they tell me that they miss me, have never shown anything but support for my globetrotting. 

When I moved to Istanbul six months ago, my parents declared that they would come visit, and they are. I’ll meet them at the airport tonight, my mental to-do list bursting with my favourite museums, cafes, parks, markets, places to walk by the sea. I’ve heard some funny horror stories of families traveling together, of adult offspring reverting back to their glum teenage selves while parents call all the shots. Something tells me that with my parents and their history of warm encouragement, I’ll be just fine.