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| Were they ever this young? Learning about tsunamis when a little one hit La Cruz |
Exactly five years ago in La Cruz, Mexico we were
invited to our friend’s boat,
Totem for pizza. When we got there though rather
than being served ‘the best pizza in the world’ (which we had been told about
in great and sumptuous detail) we were given a meal of fresh seared tuna. Not
shabby, but not the much lauded BPIW.
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| Mexico |
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| Malaysia |
Luckily the Totems are cool people and we enjoyed hanging out
with them even if they lied about the menu. The kids played for hours and days
on end, Behan and I would go for long walks, Evan and Jamie would do boat
stuff. With a few weeks to go before they planned to jump off for their pacific
crossing they promised the BPIW would still happen.
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| Mexico |
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| Australia | |
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| Malaysia | |
But it didn’t. Other meals happened; there were tacos on
shore, and potlucks, and a final farewell dinner. And as we waved goodbye when
they set off for Australia,
Jamie told us we’d just have to meet them in Australia for his pizza.
So two years later we did just that. The kids were bigger,
the seasons were upside down, but the family was still very cool. We had a lot
of meals together; there was Korean food with Scotch for Gung Haggis Fat
Australia Day (Robbie Burns/Chinese New Year/AU day), corned beef and cabbage
for St Patrick’s, Aussie BBQ’s on shore and even take out pizza. But six months
after reconnecting with them, Totem was again on their way. And when I asked
about the long-promised, but never-delivered, BPIW Jamie told us to meet them
in Malaysia.
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| Australia |
I’m not sure about you, but traveling 15,000 miles for pizza
seems like a lot. Even for really good pizza. But I looked at it this way—if we’re
headed around the world anyway, why not get a meal out of the deal? So we put
the coals on to catch Totem before they set off for South Africa. Our original plan saw
us overlapping with them for about a week. We gave Jamie plenty of notice and
let them know we were coming for dinner.
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| Malaysia |
The pizza was great: completely worth the years and miles.
Or maybe what was worth it was the discovery that even as nomadic families who
have been following our own paths it’s possible to forge a deep, enduring and
recurring connection.
One of the questions we’re often asked is how Maia finds and
keeps friends. The vision of us passing by on the edges of other people’s lives
was one that also one that worried me. I love the history that comes with long-term
friendships. I wanted Maia to have grown-up with
other kids; to see her own changes reflected in them. That’s hard to find
when your childhood spans dozens of countries.
So maybe the pizza wasn’t just a pizza. Maybe the best part of
that dinner was catching up with dear friends and having a chance to both reminisce
about the past and look ahead to our voyage to South Africa—with the very same
people.
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| Mexico |
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| Australia |
Or maybe we just take meal invitations really seriously and
if you ever invite us for dinner you better really, really mean it.
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