Kate Wickers - Shape of a Boy: Family life lessons in far flung places

Family life lessons in far-flung places

Kate Wickers

Oh, but they wont remember any of it! was the standard comment when I told family and friends of our latest travel plans to take our children to Borneo, Cambodia or Sri Lanka. Might as well just stick them in a cupboard until theyre teenagers then, was my usual tart reply.

My own childhood memories of holidays are of rock-pooling in Cornwall and caravanning in the Lake District, but there are a couple of others that stand out. On a road trip through France and Switzerland when I was five years old, we stayed in a run-down chateau, where by night we listened to the sound of furniture being dragged across the floor in the room above us, only to be told by the owner that the room was unoccupied. I made a friend of the owners daughter, Mimi, who spoke no English but would call for me with a tuneful Coooeeeeee. We drank chocolate milk out of glass bottles and tied ribbons around the tail of the chateaus cat. My parents ran out of money on the last day and we slept in our car in a field only to wake to the sight of my Dad staring down the barrel of an angry French farmers shot gun. Another year, my Mum and I flew to Spain, while my Dad followed overland on his 1000cc motorbike. I remember the thrill, aged twelve, of riding pillion (without a crash helmet) along the esplanade in Barcelona, and the admiring glances my Dads bike received from local teenage boys. I took my first solo trip at eighteen, booking into a small scruffy hotel in Paris near the Jardin de Tuileries, where I spent my time posing on benches pretending to read while smoking unfiltered French cigarettes. I realized then the possibilities travel gave to reinvent yourself, with no one there to say, Thats not like you.

In my second year of studying Media & Communications at university, a professor suggested that I should send some features out to publications with a view to getting published, giving this advice, Write about something you love. It took me all of five seconds to decide that would be travel. I bought my first Writers and Artists Yearbook in 1994 and turning to the list of publications beginning with A, I sold my first feature on Prague to a magazine called Active Life. This was quickly followed by several commissions from Adventure Travel. I then went on to B (Birdwatching), C (Cycling Today) you get the picture. By the time I graduated, Id progressed to T, writing regular adventure travel features for The Telegraph, covering stories such as Tet (New Year) in Vietnam, hiking the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal and trekking through Tiger Leaping Gorge in China.

My boyfriend (now husband), Neil, and I shared a love of travel, exploring Greece, Morocco and Turkey in the early days of our relationship, but soon striking out to India and Nepal, Ecuador and the Galapagos.

I didnt really consider what travelling with kids in tow would be like but when our first son, Josh, was born, I was determined that Have baby, will travel would be my mantra. He was just three months old when we boarded a plane to Mallorca, at four months he came with us to Lisbon, at five months to Amsterdam. He couldnt have been a lovelier or easier companion. When Josh was nine months old, I found out that I was pregnant again. Surely two little travel buddies would be even better than one?

I was first and foremost a stay-at-home mum (pre-school childcare consisted of three afternoons at nursery for the boys while I wrote), taking writing assignments and editing projects on a wide variety of subjects from alternative medicine to horticulture to property, but travel writing was the work I loved the most. When Josh was three and Ben two, I decided it was time to venture further afield but an unexpected complication arose, when Josh was diagnosed with a life-threatening nut allergy. My instinct was to keep him in a nice safe bubble, never straying out of our comfort zone, however I didnt want Josh growing up with an allergy that held him back, too frightened to explore the world (and its glorious food). So, armed with an EpiPen we travelled and every country we visited I had the same terrifying but crystal-clear sentence translated into the local language: My son has a life-threatening allergy to nuts and nut oil.

By the time our third son, Freddie, was born (when Josh was five and Ben three), we were confident travelling with kids, and felt sure that wed continue to explore the world as a family of five (tuk-tuks, by the way, make great baby changing stations).

Shape of a Boy tells of the many quite-by-chance life lessons that our sons have learned while travelling. What we experienced as a family often took us by surprise. Most experiences were magical and exceptional, and on very rare occasions disconcerting. All were life-defining. I felt sure that these experiences would shape them into the adults theyd become, whether they remembered them or not. After all, memory is a tricky one to define, often triggered by a smell or taste; a photograph or story shared within a family. Remember the time when we... ? Our conversations so often begin like this.

1 March 2000,
Jerusalem, Israel

Oh, Little town of Bethlehem, how noisy/crowded/commercial we see thee lie. I was glad to escape the scrum of tourists in Manger Square, and head to the Chapel of the Milk Grotto which, as excursions go, will probably rank as one of my weirdest. Said to be the spot where Mary hid in an underground cave to breastfeed Jesus as she and Joseph fled from King Herod, there was a small queue of devotees waiting to pray to Our Lady of the Milk. Feeling more than a little ridiculous I joined them. So, the story goes that drops of Marys milk fell to the ground, turning the brown stones a creamy white. Its a stretch for the imagination, even though theres evidence displayed a piece of the original brown rock that Marys squirting breasts failed to hit. Whats also unusual about the place is that it is visited by both Catholic and Muslim women who are struggling to conceive or breastfeed. On the wall theres a notice that states that three thousand babies have been born to mothers who have prayed here. What it doesnt tell you is how many women have visited and remained childless. Im guessing its a lot more. Once in, I felt my cynicism ebb away, immediately charmed by the cosy atmosphere (would it be blasphemous to suggest that it would make a cracking bar?), with the uneven white walls and roofflickering with candlelight, softly illuminating the paintings of Mary and Jesus that decorate the walls. The altar was simple, adorned with a beautiful icon of Mary nursing Jesus, and there I found a young Arab woman kneeling in prayer. I hung back so as not to disturb her, wondering what her story was. When she rose, she looked back to me and smiled shyly, glancing at my stomach. I nodded and her smile widened. It was a lovely connection to make, and I felt immediately guilty for scoffing at her and the other women, who, most likely, were desperate to conceive. Who knows, if it had taken me longer to become pregnant perhaps I would have been on my knees beside her