3 Ginger Snaps

If I ever write a book about life with three daughters it will start with the day I decided to take parental leave from my secure and stable teaching position at a great school and somewhere in the middle, I’ll write about renting bathing suits for my daughters at a pop-up Chinese New Year water park somewhere in the middle of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. 

 
You see, since making that choice I have been trying my hardest to foster a sense of adventure in my daughters. To instil in them the idea that they can try anything they want to try. Especially if they have each other. But damn it’s a hard thing to do. 

My kids already know adventure to some extent. They know ski trails and hikes and canoe rides. They know strange foods and street cars and Overnights. But Asia – Asia is new. Asia is completely beyond their frame of reference. Asia is full of surprises. And they are taking their own time adapting and finding their sense of adventure in this foreign land. Tonight is a perfect example. Tonight is our second night, after our first full day, in Phnom Penh – the national capital of Cambodia. It is busy here. And it smells different than the more rural experiences we have had thus far. And the scooters come at you from all directions. My first instinct when I arrive in a new city is to get out and walk around. So tonight we went for a walk. And it was torture. For me and for them. 

-Where are we going?

-I don’t know. We are exploring. 

-How long will we be going?

-I don’t know. It depends on what we find. 

-I want to go back. 

-We will. But not yet. 

-What about turning down this street?

-Where does it go?

-I don’t know. We are exploring. 

-no. 

They resisted at every corner. Every bend in the road. At moments, every step. 

I suppose this shouldn’t come as a surprise to me. I have an advanced degree in child development and I know that kids like structure and routine. And we have pretty much abandoned structure and routine.  And so it shouldn’t come as a surprise to me that my kids are hesitant. There is no “home” right now. There is a lot to see – A lot to process and make sense of. And a lot of the time we aren’t even that well equippped as parents, at least in this situation, to help them make sense of some of the very challenging and unsettling things they are seeing. So ya – I guess it makes sense that they are resisting. 

Of course, we are doing our best to apply all that we know about attachment​ to help them go for it. To reassure them that we will all be together and that we will all be safe and that we will all make it back in one piece. And one of the ways we are doing that is to go out and find this stuff:

For me the best part of the night was when they knocked over the wheel and had to figure out how to right it on their own. Look closely and you can see Ruby clutching on, weighting the wheel at the bottom while Charlotte elevates from the other side. I’m not sure what class of lever this is – but I think it qualifies as a good time and a physics lesson. 

At the end of the night on the walk back to our hotel ruby declared that she would never not want to go on a walk again – which I know is a declaration she will likely recant at some point – and at least I know we are making progress. 

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