Independence for Dependents on Family Trip

In my adult travels, no memory could possibly match the summer of ’89 and the vacation I spent with with my two teen-age daughters, Katy, 12, and Stephanie, 15.

We were together in Switzerland, with a rare opportunity to abandon many of our ideas of who we are . . . and to discover new meaning in our lives.

I worried a little about how the girls would take to the changes. I was afraid they might miss their friends’ company too much to enjoy mine, and I imagined they would both suffer a severe case of telephone withdrawal. And, unless they were able to see beyond what wasn’t there, I was afraid they wouldn’t see what was there.

But mine weren’t the only fears. My daughters worried, too, especially when they arrived and heard, for the first time, the sound of a native tongue. They had understood that people in Switzerland would, of course, speak a different language, but the idea didn’t really sink in until they went to buy their first Swiss chocolate bar and experienced English as a foreign language.

They began to wonder how they would ever manage buying the simplest post card, asking for directions--things they had done over and over again, without ever thinking much about it.

The loss of language skills was, to say the least, humbling. For the first few days, they were once again the little girls I remembered from long ago--depending on me for everything from train schedules to meals, afraid to venture too far from my side.

They stopped thinking of themselves as sophisticated teen-agers and realized (with what must have been great relief) that they were still kids.

But once the first wave of culture shock wore off, they discovered that I didn’t know so much about this strange new land, either. There were times when all three of us were equally confused, intrigued, frustrated, challenged. Most of the time, we were all of those things at once.

We learned to depend on each other, and we learned to depend on ourselves. The day that Stephanie traveled alone to Lucerne was, for her, the dawning of true independence. And I hope that Katy will always remember her fearless plunge into the icy waters of Lake Thun.

There were, for each of us, many personal triumphs that made stronger each strand of the braid that is our family. With new perspective, we learned to make decisions and stand together in the world, drawing on our individual resources to create our own new life and our own good times.

Our days were filled with adventure--hiking through valleys and along rivers, crossing the borders into France and Italy, picnicking in fields of wildflowers, sketching snow-capped mountains and photographing thundering waterfalls.

Much of the time that we were adventuring, we were talking. There was time; time to talk and to listen to one another, and time to be quiet enough to listen to ourselves.

We rediscovered our curiosity and the childlike sense of wonder that too often gets lost in the shuffle of our lives. Seeing the girls as they came face to face with a glacier for the first time was no less miraculous than watching their first steps. The dramatic scenery of the Alps brought the mystery of geography to life--everywhere we looked, every day.

Suddenly, there was so much they wanted to know: How were the mountains and rivers formed? What makes the lakes so green? Do animals speak different languages?

The Alpine highs were truly inspiring, as we traveled up through the clouds and discovered the world from an entirely different vantage point, one from which our lives and our world looked quite small.

At the end of each day, we came home. As the train pulled into the Thun station, our surroundings looked wonderfully familiar. And as the days’ events settled into another delightful memory, we relaxed.

Our thoughts turned from the wonders of nature to what to eat for dinner. Sometimes we were overwhelmed by beauty and magnitude, and the simple routines of our Swiss life were as comforting as the featherbeds in which we dreamed our dreams of Switzerland.

Our nights were filled with the laughter we shared over peppermint tea and Swiss pastries, as we wrote post cards to our friends back home and recorded adventures in our journals.

Late in the evening, we walked home along the moonlit shore of Lake Thun, where elegant swans glided noiselessly across water that mirrored the night sky.

Travel offers many opportunities for all of us to expand our horizons, but travel with children allows you to see a little of the world from a child’s point of view. Sometimes that can be both rewarding and puzzling.

I admit there were times when I couldn’t understand why my kids were reading books when all that glorious scenery was passing before us.

But I learned to trust in the pace they set for themselves, and to understand that there were times when they needed to get their bearings in strange surroundings by doing something that was totally familiar.

Traveling with children is a chance to experience once again the adventure of discovery and the magic of adventure. It can be a learning experience for the entire family. Hiking with my daughters, I learned that destination need not be the object of hiking; there is no need to hurry past all that nature offers.

They made the most of every moment, taking time to pick wildflowers and look for just the right souvenir rocks; to read in the shade by a babbling brook and to lie in the sun and watch the clouds. And, although we didn’t always get far along the hiking trails, the days we spent hiking together were wonderfully full.

Traveling to a far-off land and experiencing another culture opened all of our eyes to the simple fact that there are many ways to live and to be. But also that, in spite of all of the differences, there is a basic essence of humanity that transcends the borders of language and society.

To have made that discovery together was one of our most joyful experiences as a family.