My youngest daughter went off to Year Five camp last week. She and her schoolmates went to Cheung Chau for five days, and it was hard to say goodbye. It brought home the notion that, while I have done my best to protect my daughters during their childhood, I will have to start letting them go. It also brought back memories of my own travels and journey of independence.
I had planned my departure from high school in a way that gave me an eight-month gap before university. After months of my cajoling them, my parents gave me permission to spend five months in Paris (to improve my French), and a month in Florence (to study Renaissance art history and etching). There was a two-month break in between, which I planned to spend backpacking from Norway to Greece. I was armed with my backpack, my student rail pass and my Let's Go guide to Europe. It was the mid-1980s, communism still loomed large and I was just a few weeks short of my 18th birthday.
I had an unforgettable time seeing the great sights of Europe, but what I remember in a more visceral way are my encounters with people - and wildlife. Some of them were fun and fascinating, but others were not. The bedbugs at the hostel in Amsterdam, for instance. One day I found myself crouching in the middle of the street in Fiesole, Italy, next to my art-school classmate, holding the hand of a woman who had just been hit by a truck. (She later died.) I told my parents about these incidents.
But there were things I didn't tell them: having a gun pointed at me by an Albanian border guard; the youth hostel in Nice that had no locks; perverts accosting me in the gift shop at the Centre Georges Pompidou and on the Paris Metro; being propositioned on the train to Marseilles.
So now I start to wonder how to protect my children from such encounters. When I look back on my backpacking days I see how naive I was. And I don't think the world has got any safer, not even with Skype and Facebook and texting for instant communication. Because of this, I have decided I will be more proactive about teaching my girls the ways of the world, and I have started early.
Last summer, I took my nine-year-old on a 'backpacking' trip across Belgium and France - destination Barcelona. I had no illusions about spending any more nights in youth hostels. My backpacking days, at least as far as accommodation goes, are behind me. We went from one hotel to another - interspersed with stays with friends. One day, at the Renaissance Barcelona, I watched three strapping American youths check in using (I am fairly certain) one of their parents' reward points. They had brand new backpacks, unlike the old days.