Chris from Susanville, California.

In a few hours the alarm will go off and G and I will get dressed in the dark, (please pray for matching shoes) and make our way to the Anzac Dawn Service in Doha. The event will be run by the Australian and New Zealand Association, it will be at the Hyatt Hotel, thank you Hyatt people for getting out of bed so early.

Anzac Day obviously started with the Anzacs, but its also a time to remember all of our soldiers. Whoever and wherever they may be. I only know a handful of soldiers, but one in particular keeps popping up in my mind.

His name is Chris and he's from a little town called Susanville, in California. He's tall and blonde. He speaks quietly and has impeccable manners. Manners, I imagine, his mother is incredibly proud of. He is in love with the idea of travel. He likes to ask questions about where you're from and what happens there.

He is a boy. He is nineteen years old.

I know he's technically an adult but he looks like a boy to me. The young son of any one of my friends.

When we met him, he was stationed in Iraq, in the Infantry, he was on his first break after a six month stint. He chose to spend the break in Doha. The options were limited.

We were on our first 'Desert Safari'. Aunty Suzie was in town so we were trying the touristy dune bashing trip, this involved driving sideways up and down sand dunes in a Landcruiser while gripping the handrail in a white knuckle fashion. Thankfully, after about forty five minutes, it was time for lunch at the camp by the beach. The campsite had a traditional Bedouin tent, a makeshift kitchen in an air conditioned trailer, a volleyball net, a very old and tired camel and some chairs with shade on the beach. Iran, in the distance across the water, Saudi Arabia a little further down the road, we were out in the middle of the desert, just us and about twenty generators.

Aunty Suzie and I stifled a school girl giggle when our driver and guide for the day asked if we minded sharing the facilities with a group of American Soldiers. With expectations of the usual American soldier, you know, a mixture between Private Ryan, Matt Damon and Jake Gyllenhaal, we felt the day had just got a little more interesting. 

For about the first hour of sharing the camp, the soldiers kept to themselves, they were busy having a laugh, playing volleyball or smoking the Shisha pipe. They were all young, a mixture of men and women, all of them were incredibly fit. Six pack abs and serious tattoos were the theme of the day, they were on a break and our little family unit was of little interest.

There was one guy though, who was hovering, wherever we were he was usually about ten metres away. We went for a swim, he went for swim. We sat down at a table by the beach, he sat at the table next to us. We looked at the camel....

"Have you noticed this guy" I said to G, "I think he wants to talk to us". Greg gave me that look, the one that says "I've seen this before, you want to adopt him don't you."

At lunch time I asked if he wanted to join us, he quickly smiled and nodded and that's when we got to meet Chris. Fascinated by Australia and how it worked he had about a hundred questions, when we mentioned our travels his eyes lit up "that's what I want to do". He explained how after joining the army, he'd been sent to the other side of the US to train for a few months and then it was time to go to Iraq.

As a mother, I was interested to hear what his mother had said when he broke the news about joining the army. "Oh, she was still trying to talk me out of it on the morning I was leaving" he said. It was said in the same dismissive tone a teenage boy would use to tell you of his over protective mother who didn't want him to drive late at night. I winced as I looked at my two little boys. I wanted to ring his mother, tell her he'd eaten a good meal, looked healthy and was okay. He laughed and assured us all that she knew he was fine.

For the next hour or so I found myself struggling not to get too emotional while we were chatting. I'm not sure if it was the fact that he was so sweet. Perhaps it was from our time living in North America, seeing the young faces, the names that came up on the news each night "we will remember them". Every night, more faces, more dead. We lived in North America for five and a half years, every night, more faces. Maybe it was just that he was so excited about the size of the Mall we had in Doha "we don't have anything like that in Susanville".

There are soldiers all over the world currently fighting or peace keeping in situations not many of us understand. The details over the years have become very fuzzy around the edges. Remember when people took to the streets in protest against going to Iraq? That was eight years and thousands of lives ago. Eight years.

Each evening many of us watch, completely desensitized to the news of nine more killed in a roadside attack. "Geez, that's terrible" we say as we tap on our remotes to see what else is on.   

So Chris, wherever you are, I will be thinking about you today and hoping that you made your way back to Susanville, California. I hope you told them all about that enormous Mall you saw you in Doha. I will be thinking about you and many others.

Lest we forget.

Follow the trail

Growing up, on Easter Sunday the Easter Bunny left our eggs at the end of the bed. I was very happy with the arrangement. Well I was, until I read somewhere that in some households, the Easter Bunny put on a far more elaborate Easter experience. I'd read that he left a piece of string for you to follow to find your chocolate treasure. I envisaged the fun that those other families had, all laughing and squealing as they went on the great chocolate hunt.

When I lodged a formal protest with my mother, she raised an eyebrow and explained that by age 11, really no one was under the illusion that I was still a believer. It was over. The jig was up.

I was completely thrown. How did they know that I knew? I'd kept up the facade so well, something every youngest child understands. You hear the whispers "do you think she still believes" and you take note as the older sibling gets scolded every time they attempt to let the cat out of the bag "you know he's not...." your sister quickly gets cut off "that will be enough" a stern voice from a parent. In one way, as the youngest, you almost feel it's your duty to keep up the act, you truly believe that it's up to you to keep the magic alive.

When I woke the following Easter Sunday, I found a piece of red string at the end of my bed, it was making it's way out the door, begging to be followed.

She'd done it.

As I followed the string through the house, my mother watched from a distance, she was giggling, she looked slightly bewildered but highly amused at the thrill I was getting from the experience.

I love my Mum.

The Easter Bunny has managed to find us all over the world. It's a similar routine, he started with string and then moved to a "follow the trail" concept, I have no idea why he changed the process as string is much cheaper than small chocolate eggs.

The Little Travelers have followed the trail in homes in Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Tripoli, Calgary, Houston and now Doha. The treasure has been found in temperatures that range from minus ten to plus forty. The Bunny has narrowly avoided disaster, one year he left the eggs in the oven which would have been a great hiding spot if G hadn't turned on the oven to warm up the hot cross buns.

The Bunny had to hide the eggs up very high the first year we had he Beagle, the Bunny now locks the Beagle in the spare room and thanks her with a small egg upon her release. This morning The Little Travelers woke up to find the Bunny had been in their rooms, the trail made its way down the stairs and the stash was found.......









Do you have similar traditions for your holidays?

When are we allowed to get old?

Ask any little girl how old she is and its highly probable the answer will involve how old she'd like to be or is about to be. She's never just six, she's six and a half. My ten year old is constantly reminding me that she is soon to be eleven. Do you remember that feeling? Desperately wanting to be older? Dreaming about the freedom each milestone would bring.

As young women we proudly announce our age, sometimes even adding a couple of years, particularly if we think people will take us a little more seriously. I loved my twenties and remember being told by an older woman that my thirties were going to be even better, she was right, they were.

When I turned forty a couple of years ago I had a party to celebrate. The night was exactly as I'd hoped, old friends, lots of silliness, good music and a requirement for a greasy breakfast in the morning. When I looked around at others my age I realized there was a quiet smugness that came with getting older, a confidence that has you revisiting fashions, but this time you don't do the bubble skirt. You've learnt from past experience and you know what you're going to regret. When I looked at my girlfriends, many of which I've known since my teens, I realized how far we'd come, how much stronger we all seemed.

Of late though, I've wondered about the smugness. It feels like it's being stolen, there's a sinister element creeping in, a conversation that keeps popping up, whether its a quick coffee, a chance encounter in a car park or a dinner party. We're all starting to talk about our faces.

I guess the first thing I noticed was my neck, as I stood in front of the bathroom mirror I realized the skin was different, it was papery and thinner, I began plastering moisturizer on it, thinking it might be a temporary thing. It's not.

At the traffic lights I looked in to my rear vision mirror and was forced to take a second look at my eyelids. How did that happen? I'm sure they didn't look like that this morning? Did they just drop? I think it happened somewhere between the petrol station and the supermarket. I began to push my eyebrows upwards, I found the perfect pose, index finger lifting the eyebrow while my thumb pushed my cheek towards my ear. There, I don't look stupid at all! Perfectly normal. Now I just needed to work out how to carry the groceries.

Then it was the bump on my nose, a little round ball that has just appeared out of nowhere, "It's nothing" said the doctor at the last visit, "if you like I could send you to a plastic surgeon to have it removed but you'd probably be left with a scar".  I thought about my potential visit to the plastic surgeon, about the cheeky add ons I could include while I was there, would anyone notice the eye and brow lift, the fillers, the injectables, the neck skin removal? When I came out looking like a spoon, completely unwrinkled and bump free, would the smugness return or would I just be waiting until I had to find another excuse to get back there again?

When do we get old? When do we allow ourselves to relax? When did wrinkles lose their respect?

Would I care so much about my droopy eyelids and papery neck skin if I didn't have to see the weird perfection of my peers? If Kylie Minogue didn't seem to have one eyebrow permanently raised? Nicole Kidman with her unusually full lips. Meg Ryan looking constantly startled. Like most women in their forties I'm not brave enough to never say never, but what I want to know is, if I started, when would I stop? Rather than look younger, aren't I just going to look like another older chick that's been pumped, lifted and filled? 

What I want is the freedom my Grandmother appeared to have with her friends. When she proudly told me that she loved her wrinkles because they were the evidence of the life she had lived, the laughter, all the good times. She said wrinkles helped the young people know where to come for advice. Let's also not forget the practicalities, I am one hundred percent sure that if you discussed the cost involved with Botox with my mother, she'd tell you she'd much rather get the leaking pipe under the driveway fixed or put it towards the new kitchen cupboards.

I think I may have discovered a solution though. Like I said earlier, remember when you added a few years? Maybe we just need to start doing it again. Instead of telling people I'm 42, I'm going to tell them I'm 52. I look pretty good for 52, don't I?!

The wrong way to say Goodbye

From the moment we met, we started saying goodbye. It started with small trips to Melbourne and Perth, we had long phone calls, lots of giggling, "what are you wearing?"

I'd drive him to the airport and find a message on my answering machine by the time I arrived home. We quickly became engaged. A few weeks later he had to go to Canada,  he wrote me a 10 page letter while he waited in the departure lounge, we spent a small fortune on long distance calls. Flowers with poetic notes arrived regularly at the office while he was gone.

After marrying we moved cities, he had to fly to Singapore, I drove him to the airport and realized I wasn't exactly sure how to get home. As the car idled on the side of the road, I sat with the map in my lap sobbing while Macy Gray helped me along with my own pity party "my world crumbles when you are not here".

Who was that girl?

If I had a time machine I'd go back and find her,  knock on the car window and tell her to go home, have a nice long uninterrupted bath, drink her coffee slowly, read a book and take lots of photos of her yet to breast feed boobs.

The travel continued, I got better at saying goodbye, he always rang as the plane was about to take off, again when he landed. We both 'drunk dialed' if we'd had a night out.  It wasn't until after we had children that I discovered what my girlfriend describes as the "bitch switch".

He wasn't going to be there for the first mothers day. On the day of his flight I sulked like a moody fourteen year old for most of the day. I told him what everyone else was going to be doing, the presents, the brunches, "I guess they'll be no breakfast in bed for me" I sighed out loud melodramatically. I gave him a Grandma kiss as he left and a patronizing pat on that back, I sighed out loud again. It was an Oscar worthy performance.

I'm incredibly embarrassed to admit that I have many of these performances in my repertoire. There's the monosyllabic goodbye as the taxi arrives to pick him up, the casual mention of everything you will be doing on your own while he is gone. "Are there any questions you'd like me to ask at parent/teacher night?"

The phone will invariably ring when you're in the middle of the dinner from hell, you'll be picking spaghetti off the wall and catching a two year old's vomit in your hands as he tells you he's had a fantastic dinner with the sales team, you can hear the excitement in his voice. You're sincerely happy for him but all you can manage is a strained "you're making it very hard for me to like you right now" before you abruptly hang up.

Three hours later when the children are bathed and drifting off to sleep, you've cleaned up the mess, set up breakfast for tomorrow and as you fold the washing, the guilt of your words starts to set in. You ring him at the hotel, with the time difference its two in the morning for him. When he answers the phone he sounds tired, but he's immediately worried something is wrong "Is everything okay?" he says. And you realize that yes, everything is just fine.

As you run through the days events. How the two year old's head somehow got caught in the fence, the missing shoe that was only bought three days ago, and the ding you put in the car when making a hasty exit from the mind numbingly boring dance class. You both start to giggle at the ridiculousness of it all. What was originally about to send you in to a fetal position in the corner now has you both laughing together. There's a pause in the conversation, "So what are you wearing?" he says.


For nostalgia's sake, here's a bit of Macy.



So what about you? Do you have a bitch switch? Or do you crave having time apart?

Jesus, Lily and James.

Up until today, I had very wrongly believed that when it came to religion and The Little Travelers, I had it covered. 

It appears that I was wrong, very wrong.

It seems that while I'd been busy concentrating on being kosher, on making sure our Mosques and Temples were covered, I'd left out a few minor details. It was information I was sure they knew, hadn't we talked about it? 

One of the great things about living in a Muslim country, is you can completely avoid all forms of commercialization in Christianity. No high pitched television commercials reminding you of limited shopping days and no Easter Eggs on the shelves in January. 

Although, one of the tricky side effects, is that without the prompts, you have no idea when Easter actually is. Not you, or your children.

All four of The Little Travelers were with me in the car today when the first one asked "So, when's Easter?"

"Yes" said number two excitedly, "when does the Easter Bunny come?" 

It was the second question that raised me on to my parenting soapbox. 

"You know, Easter isn't all about chocolate and bunnies. I think its important we remember why we celebrate Easter" I said this earnestly, while thinking of Lindt Chocolate Balls and how we were going to keep the beagle away from the stash.

When your children range from four to ten in age, a few questions from Mum can turn in to a rabid and frenzied display of I know I know, which is exactly what happened when I asked the next question. 

"Who knows what happened at Easter?"

"Jesus had a birthday!" screamed The Second Little Traveler.

I put it down to excitement. I tried an easier question.

"When is Jesus' birthday"?

"On Christmas Eve?" asked the First Little Traveler. 

"Well, close, but no." I remained calm "While we're talking about Christmas Eve though, it was on Christmas Eve that Jesus' parents were told there was no room at the Inn. Can you remember  his parent's names?"

"YES!" screamed the eldest child.

 "Lily and James"

Without wanting to humiliate and discourage, I raised an eyebrow and checked I'd heard what she'd said correctly. 

"Lily and James, um, I'm not sure who they are?"

I saw a lightbulb, a glimmer of recognition in her face.

"Oops, she said, that was Harry Potter".

It's that time of the year

It's that time of the year. Expats all over the world are waiting in trepidation, waiting for a tap on shoulder, wondering if their time is up. If not here, where? Those who are content are trying to hide and stay under the radar. Those who are miserable are waving their hands in the air "pick me, pick me".

It's transfer time.

In the lead up to the summer break the domino effect makes its way through organizations all over the world. In a rush to make the change before the new school year, Bob gets moved from London to Russia, so Susan replaces him which leaves a gap in Nigeria, this is filled by Ayman who really didn't want to leave Singapore, but Vikram, who has just finished his latest round of antimalarial drugs in Angola, is ecstatic about the move.

If you'd like to get transfered but can't work out how to make the chain of events fall in your favour, fear not, I have learnt there are some things you can do to guarantee a move.

Firstly, go out and find a really good friend, a confidante who provides no awkward pauses, someone who makes you snort when you laugh.

After you've found her, the two of you will discover a fantastic facility ten minutes from your house, you won't have noticed it for the entire two years you've been living in your destination as it's unmarked and a bit of a hidden gem. It has three swimming pools, a wonderful gymnasium and a magical playground for the children, you can't believe your luck! You will pay the equivalent price of a small car for membership, but you'll convince yourself it will be worth it, it's not like you're due for a move.

Next up, you will acquire your dream job, it will have you skipping to the office. The hours are perfect, the people around you are brilliant and you've been promoted within months of being hired. Your new boss will gently enquire as to your longevity and you will assure him you're not going anywhere, I mean, your partner promised you this only last week. You're rock solid!

You'll realize at about this time that its been weeks since you've been lost, people actually come to you for directions, you've learnt enough language to survive in a crisis and after trying 15 doctors you've finally found someone who doesn't want to give you a pap smear for suspected tonsillitis. Your children will have all found friends and have been assigned great teachers, teachers that you requested. Finally, you've got rid of the team of pigeons that live in your bathroom exhaust fan and the lady with leprosy who sits outside the supermarket no longer spits on your feet as you enter, yesterday you think you saw her smile.

After all of this, the phone call will come. "We're moving". As all of the above rushes through your mind you'll hear that familiar sentence "can you call three packing companies for a quote? I need to go to wherethehellisthatistan for a briefing next week"

For those dreaming of a move, its a different scenario. They will sit by the phone waiting for the call. The pigeons in the bathroom exhaust, just will not go and the smell, oh the smell. You have been lost twice this morning, at one stage you were in the backstreets of somewhere that was just too scary to get of the car to ask for directions. Every night when your partner walks through the door you try and stop yourself from asking "Did you hear anything?" You've mentally been crossing off the weeks, your heart started to beat faster when you heard the Browns were off to Baku, when the DeRoche's relocated to Paris..."pick me, pick me".

You'll wonder if you need to put the deposit down for the preschool, try one more time to get the phone line fixed, do something about the shower rod that falls on you head every morning mid shampoo. Do you need to apologize to the crazy lady across the road who gave you the finger after you reversed in to her petunias? Or can you just let it go and leave it all behind.

For those who are waiting for the tap on on the shoulder, perhaps its time to remember what you signed up for and why. The adventure, the unknown, the break from the familiar. The fact that the pigeon poo will eventually make you laugh and you and the crazy lady will possibly realize you're in it together and become friends. Yes, it can be a pain, but as I say to the Little Travelers, "How exciting, your best friend is sitting somewhere now and doesn't even know you exist, they're about to get the best surprise ever, they're about to meet you!"