Unpacking awkwardly, both with a child on our arm, we start questioning the sense of our long weekend away to see the grandparents. Of course, we say, the children must be crabby after such a long time in the car, just as we are – that ambiguous numbing lethargy which comes from being mentally but not physically tired. Unlike us, we realise, they must also be confused. They are too young to understand that those claustrophobic, noisy hours on the motorway mean leaving one place, where they were surrounded with loving adults – grandparents, aunts, uncles – and had a garden to explore, and arriving in another, where they only have us, busy parents trying to restart our ordinary lives. Where have all those kindly, ready hands and laughing faces gone? The soft grass, the row of stones, the splendid jungle of flowers, the balcony fence with its gaps for playing peekaboo, the mass of beads and bracelets from Grandma’s old jewellery box? All inexplicably disappeared, to their minds at least. 

Our suitcases now empty but children still complaining if left to play alone on the floor, we speculate that perhaps we should not have gone away at all. They need a hard and fast routine at this age, we tell ourselves sternly; a continuous environment in which they sleep in the same bed each night. (We had all slept badly the few nights we had been away.) Then comes the round of justifications. But it was such a lovely time – those precious days with grandparents and cousins, that chance to explore outside without the fear of stinking dog poo and broken glass, the trip to friends with guinea pigs and a trampoline, neither of which they would ever encounter in our city lives, the few hours we had to ourselves whilst the grandparents whisked them away to the park. All of that made it worth it, surely. 

Living far away from our respective families, this is our constant dilemma, an equation we will never solve: x(interrupted sleep + travel exhaustion + bewilderment) = y(family + new experience + the odd hour of babysitting) 

In earlier times, our and our families’ expectations would have been different. Big fast cars and cheap airfare have heralded an age of frequent visiting rights, no matter how far apart families may be strewn. This is both wonderful and  trying.  That night in bed we resolve we will not travel anywhere for, oh, at least a year – not until they can understand what travelling means, or maybe when they can enjoy colouring books. People must come to us, we say, if they really want to see us. We can say this with such utter resolution, however, because deep down inside we know that once the memory of the car journey has faded and a new compelling occasion arises, we will once again be convincing ourselves that ‘y’ is a much, much larger number than ‘x’.