The Boy is looking pensive, holding back the tears he knows I don’t want to see. Hubby and I are heading off to Barcelona, leaving the Girl and the Boy in the care of their grandparents. I’m tucking the Boy into bed. I can see he wants to talk. We chat a little about families where the parents are divorced or separated. He says he just can’t even begin to imagine what that feels like, because our family will never be like that. And then we get to the crux of the matter:
'I’ve been thinking, Mummy, that you don’t really ever get a chance to get away from us, so you should just go, enjoy yourself, because you deserve it.’
What he doesn’t say is what he is really thinking: Why do you need to get away from me? I know this, because I know my boy, but also because I remember feeling just that way when my parents went on holidays without me and my brother and sister. I remember confused feelings – missing them, of course, but also not quite understanding why they had to go. To make it worse, my parents would go off for a week somewhere Abroad. Somewhere glamorous and warm, staying in actual hotels, with pools! My parents never, ever took us kids Abroad. Usually, if we got a holiday at all, it was staying in a farmhouse B&B in Donegal, or somewhere near Newcastle or Castewellan in Northern Ireland. Donegal at least had the attraction of being Down South (despite the fact that it is actually due North of where we lived in Belfast). The money was different, the accents were different, the ice-cream brands had the same logos but different names. Newcastle, however, is no more that an hour’s drive from Belfast. It might be a seaside town, but spending a week there hardly felt like a holiday at all.
So the first time I ever went Abroad was with Hubby, when he was still just Swain. Even now, as the plane touches down in a foreign land, I get a little clenching of panic – will I be able to cope with Abroad? For so long it was a place that other people went to, and, moreover, a place that I was apparently unworthy of, or unfit to cope with, or was just, mysteriously, not for me.
But I think, finally, Abroad is for me. Barcelona was wonderful, Hubby was Swain again for a few days, and while I missed the kids, I really didn’t wish they were there.
