Fatherhood moments during drives

By Francis Ochoa Philippine Daily Inquirer June 17,2018

Family bonding time for Jo Anne, Isay and Francis

The ride to Subic was curling to its final homestretch, and at the backseat, firmly tucked in her car seat, my two-year-old daughter was fast asleep.

 

I caught a glimpse of her through the rearview mirror. As her mother watched over her, she sighed and stretched an arm—telltale signs she was about to wake up. I smiled.

 

Parents like to spend a lot of bonding moments with their children, making use of that finite stretch of precious time while they still want to be with you.

 

Some watch movies or go to parks or play sports. We travel. And Isay, my daughter, loves it.

 

At her young age, she has zigzagged up a packed Kennon Road to Baguio, sailed through choppy waters on mid-sized bancas to islands off the coast of Iloilo, and flown across continents from one side of the globe to the other.

 

And she has grown to be quite the trooper on these trips, soldiering on through 27-hour layovers caused by transfer mixups, and 16-hour bus rides from New York to Kentucky (and another 16 hours back) on a cramped bus providing the barest amenities for comfort.

 

Why do we do this for her?

 

Because we have so much faith in traveling as a learning tool.

 

Taking her to see the world allows her to soak in different cultures and meet different people.

 

Children absorb knowledge at such an urgent rate when they’re young, so exposing them to different races, places and languages allows them to grasp early the enormity of the world they live in.

 

It’s a neat lesson in humility, too, to comprehend the vastness of life and how small a part she is in the unfolding of the world.

Moments between a father and child, like this of Francis and daughter Isay, are precious.

Traveling allows her to experience new things: wiggling her toes for the first time in saltwater-sprayed sand, catching her first snowflake, tasting her first sidewalk street meal, going on her first mountain-high cable car ride—all these help enrich her young life and develop an urge to explore.

 

Traveling also teaches her to socialize. Isay meets a lot of new friends on trips. My Facebook contacts include people who have become acquaintances because of Isay.

 

She has a knack for making friends with people from all walks of life (and all ages, too) on the trips that we take: a young Chinese girl she played with during a layover in Guangzhou, a waitress in a beach resort in the Dominican Republic who regularly drops a message on my inbox asking about how my daughter is, and a former senator of France, who has already wrapped up a birthday gift for Isay—they’re all part of her now.

 

When she grows up, traveling will also teach her the art of budgeting. Admittedly, roaming the world is not the cash-friendliest bonding activity out there, even for a small family of three, so we have to perform a lot of financial juggling—eschewing the Greyhounds and posh airlines for budget flights and bus rides and subbing fancy hotels with cheap (but clean and comfy) hostels. It’s an art that Isay will learn from her mother soon.

 

Traveling, whether to different countries or locally, also teaches Isay to accept people of different colors and cultures. This is probably a more personal goal for me because growing up, I was one of those people who would gawk at foreigners or locals from different cultures because of the color of their skin and the way they dressed.

 

Even when done out of ignorance, staring makes people uncomfortable. Already, Isay sees people as people. She greets everyone the same way regardless of how they look or what language they speak. And she loves greeting people, even strangers she shares elevator or train rides with.

 

Strolling in a public market in Singapore, which can become the ultimate melting pot of Asian cultures, is like malling on a Sunday in Metro Manila for Isay. She sees no difference in the people she meets in both instances.

 

And on road trips, she gets to exercise her budding knowledge. Since she was 22 months old, Isay has developed the habit of reading signs.

 

Hopping into Chevrolet’s Trailblazer for a Father’s Day ride, Isay plopped herself into her car seat, and as we drove off, she did what she loves doing the most on car rides: looking out the window to read signs.

 

Her reading is quite advanced for her age. She can read newspaper headlines, four-syllable words and words with “tion,” “ph,” “th,” “sh,” “ch,” and “ng” much to our pleasant surprise.

 

A lot of this she learned at home, reading books and watching shows that teach reading. But she gets a lot of practice on road trips too.

 

And we get the chance to correct her when she makes a mistake (as we drove past a Chevrolet showroom, she looked at the sign and said: “Chev-ro-let”).

 

The best part about it? Being on a trip is time spent together as a family. The people we meet, the places we see, the activities we experience, and the food we taste pale in comparison to the “boredom” of being cooped up in a long pre-booked China Southern flight or singing kiddie songs inside the comforts of a Trailblazer.

 

Those moments, when it is just the three of us, allow us to explore ourselves and get to know each other even better, to allow me to catch glimpses of mother and daughter slumbering peacefully in the backseat —to fall in love with family all over again.

 

That has always been my favorite part of traveling.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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