Julie Jay: Irish holidays remind us that our job as parents is to make the best of it
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I am starting a campaign to reward parents who have embraced their inner patriot and decided to holiday in Ireland this summer. They are the true heroes, marching through the elements: windswept, wet, but not defeated.
“Sure, the kids don’t mind a little breeze,” these weather warriors say, their chirp belying the fact they are saturated to their knickers and the storm they are bracing has just been named something menacing like Clodagh or Conall.
It’s part of our responsibility as parents to put on a brave face for our kids, even when things aren’t going to plan. Unless it’s a chimney fire or the broadband has gone on the blink, it is our job to de-escalate rather than escalate a situation, even when this goes against our personality traits and even when we are paying through the nose for a holiday that has gone slightly awry.
As a younger person, I was all about the travelling, or as I liked to call it, crying over an ex in a different timezone. The further flung a location, the more attractive it was as a place to holiday, if for no other reason than to update my Bebo page with an exciting profile picture.
There was a time when I would only visit a country on condition it was going through some kind of military coup or huge political upheaval, primarily because the societal chaos suited the personal chaos I brought to the hostel breakfast table (lost passports, multiple muggings — let’s just say I’ve had a few).
Travelling anywhere on my own was good at times, but quite often it was hard and did little to assuage my anxiety levels, especially as I spent more time than I’d care to admit during the noughties fully convinced I was going to contract malaria on a trip. I had the path to my GP worn with repeated visits and requests for typhoid and rabies vaccines, to which his reply was generally something along the lines of: “Julie, we’ve talked about this and you don’t need malaria tablets for Costa Del Sol.” Still, as my iPod shuffle playlist would attest, I was all about leaning into my travel anxiety while flying solo.
But now, part of being a parent means you have to put on a front at all times, even when things aren’t exactly going to plan on your travels.
The rest of the fortnight will consist of you repeatedly promising to ‘get together some night’ and living in constant fear they may actually hold us to this.
As parents, we are obligated to act like everything is fine despite arriving at our ‘quiet and peaceful’ Airbnb only to discover we have accidentally booked into an Italian convent.
Such a scenario befell a friend of mine, who admitted to realising very late in the day that she had done a Hamlet on it and ‘gotten thee to a nunnery’ after one of her son’s footballs had knocked over a statue of the Virgin Mary and a gaggle of sisters dressed suspiciously similarly had come to its rescue. Still, it turned out the trip was such a success that by the end of the holiday, her Protestant partner was close to conversion.
“He couldn’t get over the homemade gnocchi,” my friend whispered in breathless tones as her husband echoed the five-star review.
“I told one of the nuns it tasted like heaven on a plate,” he said, like some kind of reverse 19th-century souper, willing to sacrifice his religious affiliations at the altar of homemade pasta.
All in all, their trip was such a success that my friend has stayed in touch with her nun friends over the years and speaks of them in a way that I’m not entirely convinced she isn’t just confusing her Airbnb stay with the movie Sister Act. When she starts speaking of being placed in witness protection and joining a choir, I can’t help but feel the lines between her life and that of Whoopi Goldberg are getting increasingly blurred.
Still, her story exemplifies making the best of it. The family played football in the gardens, avoided the hazardous candles and ate in the convent canteen because, quite literally — when in Rome. They had a great time, even if it did have my friend and her partner dodging questions about when they were putting a ring on it.
All of the world is a stage, and all parents are merely players, especially on holiday when their knickers are saturated. If you are struggling to cope, remember, things could be worse — you could be holidaying in the Costa del Sol, tanked-up on malaria tablets that are turning you slightly paranoid and only a broken iPod shuffle to keep you company. Luckily, my Bebo photo album has long since been deleted, and for that, we are grateful.