Travelling can bring up a lot of worries and ‘what ifs’ for adults and kids alike. But learning to live alongside them is all part of the adventure.
‘Will we be able to touch the clouds?’
My seven-year-old daughter, Noa, waits patiently for an answer from the Italian woman sitting across a table strewn with half-eaten pizzas.
‘No, we won’t be able to touch the clouds,’ Donatella responds apologetically.
Noa looks up to the painting of Mount Vesuvius next to the table. In it, there’s a cloud clearly sitting right on top of the volcano. I can see the wheels turning in Noa’s head. If we’re going to be standing up there tomorrow, why wouldn’t we be able to touch the clouds? She moves on to her follow-up questions. How high is the volcano? How high up do we start walking? Can I fall in?
It’s the second day of our Italy Family Holiday with Intrepid and we’re wrapping up lunch in a small restaurant in Pompeii with our leader Donatella, just down the street from the archaeological site that reveals the destruction wreaked by Vesuvius nearly 2000 years ago. In less than 24 hours we’ll take a short hike up that volcano and peer into its crater. Donatella patiently answers Noa’s questions, pointing out on the painting where we’ll start our hike and assuring her there are fences up there and she can’t fall in.
Simmering doubt
Noa’s been nervous about this activity ever since I ran her and her sister through our itinerary weeks ahead of our trip. That night, at bedtime, the best time for worries to creep down from a child’s mind and out of their mouth, Noa told me she didn’t want to walk on the volcano. What if it explodes?
I explained to her that the volcano is sleeping, hesitating on the word because Vesuvius is technically active. Saying it’s dormant would be false but telling her it’s active but very quiet wouldn’t quell her concerns.
‘It’s like a hibernating bear,’ I said. I told her that scientists are monitoring the volcano for any signs of activity, 24 hours a day, and if there was any teeny-tiny sign that the volcano was waking up, it would take time, maybe weeks, for it to actually erupt, and by then everyone would know to stay far, far away, including us.
She brought it up again a week later at bedtime. ‘I keep thinking about the volcano. What if it explodes when we’re walking on it?’
I repeated my reassurances.
‘But what if it does?’
I opted not to tell her that okay, IF it does erupt when we’re on it, we’d likely be pulverised in seconds, and instead I reminded her of the framed quote that hangs on her wall, one I hung up back when she was a baby.
What if I fall? Oh, but my darling, what if you fly?
It’s a line from a poem I’d never read before, and over the years I’ve reminded her and her older sister Isla that what ifs are normal, but it’s important to take some time to consider the good what ifs if you’re going to roll around with the bad ones.
What if I fall? Oh, but my darling, what if you fly?
What if we walk up Vesuvius and it doesn’t erupt, I posited. What if we go up there and get an incredible view of the city where pizza was born and the side of an ocean you’ve never seen before? What if we get to peer inside the crater of a volcano and see with our own eyes what that really looks like?
I brought the framed quote into our home as much for me as for Noa and Isla. I, too, am prone to worries, tossing them around in a darkened room, waiting for sleep. Upcoming trips have a way of sparking what ifs in me, too, despite the fact I’ve travelled a lot. Italy would be the kids’ first trip overseas and I had as many niggling concerns as Noa. But I’ve learned over the years and miles how the worries and the wonder of travel can co-exist.
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To the crater’s edge
The next day in Pompeii, we wolf down breakfast with a view overlooking Vesuvius, not a cloud in sight. As our van weaves up the switchbacks as far as they go, I turn to Noa in the back row and quietly ask how she’s doing. ‘Good,’ she says.
At the trailhead, Donatella announces that the kids in our group will be her co-leaders for the activity – a very important job. I have a sneaking suspicion this was a job she made up after I pulled her aside on day one and gave her a heads up about Noa’s Vesuvius concerns, her wise attempt to douse any fears in a sense of purpose.
Up we trek along the gravelly trail, regularly stopping to catch our breath and the view. If Noa’s still nervous, she doesn’t let on. At the crater’s rim, she clambers up to the fence to look inside. When we pose for a family photo, a gust of wind picks up her sister’s baseball cap and sweeps it into the abyss. If Noa expects it to sizzle up in a vat of bubbling lava, she’s sorely disappointed, or maybe relieved. It disappears into a pit of dirt that sits silent, still, fast asleep.
Later that night, in a hotel room in Minori on the Amalfi Coast, I snuggle up to Noa and ask her about her day. She tells me the volcano wasn’t what she’d pictured it would be. She thought it would be more red, more fiery, more ferocious.
‘You were very brave,’ I tell her.
She pauses and says, ‘I know.’
And on we go around the Amalfi Coast and into Sorrento, learning how to make gelato, pizza and limoncello. Noa and her sister splash in the sea every chance they get, approach every stray cat they spot and stuff themselves with pizza, pasta and gelato nearly every day. And I, for once, thanks to someone else’s itinerary and someone else in charge of the details, feel remarkably and slightly disconcertingly worry-free.
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Taking the leap
When the Intrepid trip wraps up, we carry on just the four of us up the coast to Sperlonga. Breaking up long days on the beach, we hop aboard a boat cruise to a grotto where the boat drops anchor and we plunge into the warm Mediterranean waters for a half-hour swim.
When the girls watch a young couple leap from the roof of the boat, they immediately swim back aboard to ask for a turn. The skipper says Isla, 10, can do it but that Noa is too small. Isla bounds up the ladder to the roof and, after a few moments of hesitation, plugs her nose and leaps into the water with an enormous splash accompanied by the whoops and applause of those watching from below.
Noa storms to a seat on the lower deck, plops down and erupts into tears. I paddle over and call to her to jump from the back of the boat instead. She refuses. After a few minutes of quiet fury, she bolts upright, tucks a pool noodle under her arms and runs full speed off the back of the boat. She surfaces stern-faced and propels herself back to the ladder, up onto the platform and repeats the jump over and over again, jaw clenched, brow furrowed, noodle tucked, proving something to everyone and anyone who cares to take notice, maybe most of all to herself.
On the cruise back to the marina, she sits alone on a bench, strands of hair glued to her face with tears and seawater. When she finally concedes to my offer of a hug, she wraps herself in a towel and crawls onto my lap.
‘It shouldn’t be about how big you are,’ she complains. ‘It should be about how brave you are.’
‘I agree,’ I reply, rocking her in my arms.
She carries on, proposing a better rule: if people can prove they can jump off the back of the boat, and then the slightly higher front of the boat, they should earn the right to jump off the roof.
‘That’s a much better idea,’ I tell her.
She carries on in a hushed, serious voice and tells me she’s been scared of a lot of things, like the chairlift at the ski hill last winter, but she always does them because she’s brave, so why would this be any different.
‘I’ve ALWAYS wanted to jump off the top of a boat,’ she fires. This is news to me. I think it’s news to her, too.
‘I’m really glad I know that now,’ I tell her. ‘One day we’ll find a boat for you to jump off of, I promise.’
So, on we go. In search of boats to jump off, emboldened by the proof that we’re the kind of people who can climb volcanoes, who can be scared and do it anyway and who may not be big but who are brave.
Heather and her family travelled on the Italy Family Holiday with Intrepid. Go on, be brave: find the right family adventure for you.
