Today marks three weeks until I leave for China with Mandarin Journeys for my bucket list trip of a lifetime. I’ve bought tons of crap, researched the heck out of Shanghai and even scheduled a cut and color for my currently way-too-gray and shabby hair – woo hoo!
But there’s one thing that I’ve been putting of doing.
Telling my kids that I’m going.
My daughter, who is six, has typically freaked out when I’ve left for trips. Of course, the second I’m actually gone, she’s totally fine and probably does a dance of joy and starts plotting out how she can watch a movie every night while eating Cheetos. But the day or two leading up to the trip is a lot of, “I don’t want you to go’s” and that sort of heart-breaking talk that ends in me feeling like a horrible mother for being independent.
So this time I decided to take a different approach. I was going to talk about what a great opportunity this is for Mommy and all the amazing pictures I’ll get to take of the places I go.
I was honest with how long I’d be gone. Talked up the time with Daddy and all the ice-cream they’d probably binge eat.
I told her how much I’d miss her and her brother and Daddy. How I’ll think about them all the time and try to Skype with them.
Then I waited. Waited for the tears to start, waiting for the whining to begin, waited to feel guilty over my decision to go.
She looked up at me and said, “Ohhhh, are you going to bring me back a present?”
“Uhmmm… yep. Definitely,” I said, as I watched anxiously for what came next.
“Cool. Can I have a piece of gum now?”
And that was that. She smacked her gum, looked out the car window and I was left sitting there like I was a character in a Wes Anderson film that doesn’t know what the hell is happening.
But I’m bracing myself. It’s still three weeks away. It can’t go this smoothly, can it?? And is it bad that I was a bit disappointed that I didn’t even get one little tear from her???
#bucketlistchina
