Baby Brain in Action: Travel Post Part One

In Thailand

We had only been together one year when we set off overseas. That was nine years ago. We were young and without responsibility. I already loved him a lot, but I wasn't above imagining that we might yet wave goodbye to one another from some Parisian platform or other and head off different directions. That is the charm of travel, isn't it? That anything can happen?

Obviously we stuck together. In fact, the longer we travelled side by side, the more absurd the idea of parting seemed. Later, we married. I guess that's what people do when they can't stand to be apart.

We were away from Australia for nearly two years; seven months in Asia. We had adventures – some of them I will tell my child while she is small. Some I'll recount when she is older. Quite a few I may never repeat for fear that she'll see them as permission to be as stupid and foolhardy and reckless with her life as I was. At the time I didn't realise that I would one day look back, shuddering, to think that I got away with it all. I was just having fun.

It is a truism to say that life changes when you have a baby, but I think this shift is most apparent to me when I attempt to do the things I used to do when I was childless, and they either don't succeed, or are so changed by the company of this new, small person as to be unrecognisable to me. Simple things like going out for dinner (once a regular pass-time, a favourite, taken-for-granted aspect of our lives) has, in four short months, become obsolete. Showering – no longer a languid, solitary pleasure – is now hurried, a one-woman sing-a-long with suds. Perhaps it is another truism to say that I don't always mind the changes parenthood has brought. They aren't all bad. I wouldn't swap all the long, hot showers in the world for this little girl. In fact, having her has brought new life to the dull things I used to do, changing them for the better. Supermarket shopping, walking, hanging washing on the line: I see the way my daughter looks around her when we are in the world, and I find the world freshly beautiful. Buttons? So colourful! Beautiful! Toast? So crunchy! Beautiful! This carpet? So soft! Beautiful! This grey day? So crisp! Beautiful! We watch leaves falling like rain in our yard and I don't lament the cold, or the work they will make in raking and sweeping and cleaning gutters. I just enjoy how lovely it is to behold so many yellow shapes floating, because she does.

I set out to write all about travelling with a baby, but I seem to have gotten distracted and sidetracked. How fitting. Once upon a time, I might have revised this, or saved it and come back later, determined to get to the point. But I think that, for tonight, I will leave this post here. I will close the computer. I will go into my bedroom and peer into the cot.  I will look at the face of my baby, so angelic in sleep. I will think about how much has changed in my life since I boarded a plane, one-way ticket in hand.
And how much for the better.