First there was the honeymoon... then came the babymoon... what's next? Post-babymoon? Anniversary moon? Birth moon? Child's 1st birthday-moon? Glad I am a parent moon? Anything... Just about anything to have a holiday and get away right? Of course... And by doing so, we would get to a stage where we would have more moons than Saturn even!
Now this may seem like I'm complaining, but actually I am not. I am trying to figure out ways to celebrate, to be able to take a holiday, to get away from the routine... I mean Hallmark, Archie's Cards and all these card and gift companies around the world have managed to generate additional revenues and sustain their businesses with made up celebrations like Valentine's, Friends, Mom's, Dad's, Best Friend's... and all sorts of other such days. The other day someone mentioned to me that there is now a 'Puppy Day'... (if only you could see my true feelings and my facial expressions through my writing and words about this). If they can, then surely we too can think up some other ways to take a trip, to have a holiday, to get away (without having to buy someone else a card, flowers or a gift).
The reason I talk about these moons is because we just had our babymoon. It was a tremendous celebration, a great trip and a really fun way to celebrate the upcoming birth of our little one. "So what is the significance of the babymoon?" I asked my wife. "It is the last time just the two of us will take a trip together", she tells me with a sense of exasperation as if I should already have figured that out. "and to celebrate our little baby, of course", she doesn't fail to add. So I still scratch my head, trying to figure out what it is that we are really celebrating on a babymoon...
Don't ponder too much, and don't worry about it. As they say in the UK, "Keep calm and carry on"... And carry on I did. We were heading out of London, and I was going to be off work for a week, so it was all a plus! Not to mention that we were leaving the cold, gloominess of London behind for a week of sun, surf and sand... Seychelles it was going to be. It wasn't our original choice, but a fallback option we had to resort to at short notice.
Thanks to our little friends the Aedes mosquitoes and the little packages of "joy" called the Zika virus they were delivering to babies and mommies around the Caribbean, we had to alter our plans at the Nth hour! You want this to be a happy occasion, a celebratory trip, and not one where you are cowering with fear, hiding and shielding yourself from every tiny little creature that may even remotely resemble a mosquito. Rather than applying sun-screen lotion, you would be putting on mosquito repellent all over yourself. Besides, you want to have a happy memory or two (if not more) and you don't want to threaten the life of your child before it is even born. We live in a complicated and scary world as it is; you don't want to make it scarier for the child before they have even seen it. So, from Jamaica, the destination of choice quickly became the Seychelles (sometimes I marvel at how quickly my wife and I can agree on decisions such as these... I wish it were the same for everything).
I have to say we weren't disappointed. A tiny little island nation located in the Indian Ocean, just off the coast of Africa, the Seychelles brags of very fine sand, blue waters and a warm and temperate climate. A beach lover's paradise... or just a paradise in general. We chose the Banyan Tree Resorts as our getaway with the aim of doing nothing, never having to leave the place. Mission accomplished! For five days, we trekked from the confines of our room to the breakfast hall, back to our room, then to the pool, on to the beach, back to our room and finally our last trip down for dinner. The food we were served was brilliant, authentic, tasteful creole food, Thai curries and traditional local BBQs. Sounds exhausting, eh? This was definitely not a trip for those adventurers and go-getters (or for the faint hearted for that matter)... It didn't matter - Mommy, baby and I were a happy bunch.
While we walked the beaches and waded in the shallow waters of the ocean, we thought about the upcoming changes in our lives. Make no mistake about it, we are happy about these developments. But these are major changes we are talking about - it would be unnatural not to think about them and ponder about what lies ahead! It was also a chance for us to pause and think as to how our lives were going to change. Would we be as flexible as we were on this trip? Would we be able to make decisions so quickly again? Would we really be able to choose a beach resort as our vacation destination and expect to do nothing but relax? Rather than running behind each other, we were now going to have a little one that we would be running after, to make sure they were always out of danger. We would be building castles in the sand, and listening to the child's endless joyful screams and splashes in the water. Ahhh, the joys of being a parent.
Of course, as we walked along the shores and our feet sunk into the warm sand, we couldn't help but think about the broader implications of what was to come... we have constantly hoped and prayed for a healthy and happy little one. We have done everything within our power to make sure of this, but we are bringing a child into an uncertain world; a world where anything can happen, a world where there terror is a common word in everyday speak, dangerous diseases are never far away and a world where the future of the environment is a constant uncertainty... over this week we sat and hoped that in the years to come our children (and maybe even their children) could enjoy the pleasures of this world as we see have had the chance to... to feel the softness of the sand, the warmth of the water and the fishes that swim around - there is so much beauty in this world today. We know that may not always be the case, but what we hope most of all for is a child that is warm, caring and considerate for people around, and for the world he/she will be growing up in... to be the change they would want to see in this world!
That was all for the future... for the time being I was just enjoying this great invention of man called the babymoon and what it meant for would be parents... what other moon can we come up with as an excuse for another exotic vacation!