My traveling companion is 5 years old
Memory is supposed to take form after four years old, which is why a lot of parents put off life changing travel till their kids are of age. But Tin’s passport already had Tangiers, Spain, Croatia and Gibraltar stamped in it multiple times before we embarked again for Spain this summer. Now that he is five and a half, I thought some parts of travel would take firmer hold in his imagination. However, after sleeping through the most intense flamenco show in Granada at Casa del Arte Flamenco, taking an audio tour of the magical Alhambra and its gardens, being served a special plate of spaghetti bolognese while the rest of us feasted on Morrocan cuisine at Arrayanes in Albayzin, the best part of Tin’s trip thus far? The rooftop swimming pool at the hotel in Granada. And so it goes.
I’ll take his pool memory and raise him one. While Tin was swimming, four South American children varying in ages 7 to 16 and already darker from the summer showed up in the pool, behind them came their thin, blonde, 50ish, white mother. When Tin yelled to me to come back into the cold water, the woman said to me, “Yes, Mom, come on in, the water is nice and cold.”
It was being called Mom by our children that made us strangers no more.
