Lack of communication

Now the funny thing about travel in the modern world (compared to when I travelled some twenty-five years ago) is the availability of email. When I went away it was a few addresses on your itinerary where you would hopefully wait for mail (and get it if you were lucky), or otherwise a post restante address. I do remember searching the V to W box at The Walkabout Club in London on the hunt for mail, and missing opportunities because my Dutch aunt wrote my name in such a way that my post was filed under D rather than V, and I only found my letters accidentally several months later when looking for mail for a friend of mine.

I wouldn't necessarily have expected any communications between Princess Sleepyhead and home because she's not that computer savvy and hardly ever uses email at home. But when we did have a few communications and knew that whenever she was going to be in Hanoi (which they're using as a home base) that she would have access, I became more hopeful. Only they've been told not to communicate, not to tell us anything about what they're doing until they're back.

Now, I understand this directive. The world can, at times now, seem too small a place, and not having communications adds to that sense of isolation, that sense of distance, of being in the wilderness, if you will, of being independent. But someone I teach with also has a daughter on one of these expeditions, and her daughter has been told the same things, but is emailing regardless. Oh, if only mine were as rebellious. Not often I'm wishing that from her.

I ought to have known. A few years ago, we were in Sydney and running late for a lunch appointment, prior to seeing Fiddler on the roof. So, there was my brother, crossing a deserted road on a red light, and me and his wife following, and PS standing resolutely on the kerb, unwilling to budge from it until the little man turned green. Neither my brother's entreaties nor his threats could make her move, and he was pulling his hair out with frustration. I had to admit is was funny to see him lose his temper, but even funnier to see her unmoved by it.

I should be glad she is not easy to persuade to break rules -- after all, ADD kids have a high rate of unwanted teenage pregnancy, and for many years this was The Gadget Man's fear for her. Now I see she is too much cast in my mould: too reserved and risk-averse (though she hasn't been risk-averse in physical situations that may have benefitted her to have been risk-averse -- but so far she has been lucky). So I shouldn't be cranky about not hearing. I really shouldn't. But I am. Well, not so much cranky, as frustrated. Just like my brother, really.