The first time I took Mark to France, I didn’t know the baby was a boy, or that his name would be Mark. I was at the nauseous two-months-pregnant stage, then later at the seven-months-pregnant stage, looking forward to the grand finale.
A year later, I came back with a little Buddha, then with a dragon toddler, a trottinette champion, a curious kid who loved the seaside, and most recently, with a pre-teen enjoying his newfound French freedom, like roaming around the city on his own.
“We always go to the same boring countries,” claims Mark, who wonders out loud why we’ve yet to travel to Switzerland, Iceland, or Dubai.
Er, I don’t know. Money, maybe? Also, the fact that he has a French mom, a Chinese dad, and parents with a shared passion for Central and South American countries—including places like Argentina, Chile and Brazil, which have become a kind of home to me over the years—should be enough excitement, no?
But fine. It’s the same boring trip to France again. Sorry.
I agree, France doesn’t change overnight like China, where skyscrapers pop up and cities never stop growing. But it’s never the same “boring” trip. We change, and so does the world—a bit too erratically these past few years, if you ask me.
I never feel the same before a trip to France.
When Mark was still little enough to be strapped into a stroller, a trip to France meant extra pairs of hands, many of them kind enough to pick me up as well. I was a mom, but I still needed mine, because everything felt so overwhelming and lonely across the ocean. Raising a kid in a culture where you didn’t grow up isn’t instinctive—and neither is parenting in a multicultural family. I was landing in France like a soldier on leave, and I was this close to going AWOL.
Then Mark grew up. Things settled down. I started to have both hands free more often.
That’s when other situations took over, and the keyword became loss.
First, my parents went off script. I was dreading our trip to France that year. Would it be weird not to have my dad around as usual? I lost it at first. Coming to terms with the fact that the people I thought I knew had changed was harder than expected. I guess it’s part of growing up.
Then I lost my beloved papi during the first wave of COVID and the initial lockdown. I was thousands of kilometres away, but on the phone with my mum for hours every day. I was on the line when she got the call from the hospital, which is a hell of a lot better but not any less painful than receiving the dreaded text message.
Mark and I still travelled to France that weird summer of 2020. I took a deep breath before ringing the doorbell at mamie’s apartment. I knew papi wouldn’t be there, but I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to glance at the chair where he had been sitting and joking just over a year earlier.
All the pandemic trips were weird. Like the 2021 trip, when Canada finally allowed me back in, fully vaccinated. I flew to Ottawa, picked up Mark, and brought him to France after months of no school and Canadian lockdowns. Then came 2022, complete travel chaos, with Canada just resuming flights and the lingering risk of quarantine or random tests on arrival.
And then I came face to face with loss again in 2024, the first summer when mamie’s apartment was definitely, forever empty.
When I first travelled to France with baby Mark, the number of relatives around was almost too much for Feng—parents, brother, sister, grandparents, four of them, aunt and uncle, cousins, and more.
I’m still close to my siblings, but they moved out. These days, it’s just my mum in Nantes.
It’s okay. She’s worth it.
And Nantes has become my home again over the past few years.
So no, it’s never the same trip. And now I’m travelling with a teenager, which is an adventure in itself.
Mark has changed. The clingy kid who used to shout “MAMA! DADDYYYY!” the second we were in another room wanted to stay home alone when we went to Toronto. Yeah, no. The excited kid who would happily tell you about the last twenty movies he watched in excruciating detail hasn’t really talked to us in months.
Mark has reached the stage where we are background furniture. We’re irrelevant. Plus, he’s busy “just relaxing”—from what, exactly?—with his computer, new phone, and tablet. God forbid any of these devices should run low on battery.
Will he utter more than a single word? Will he take off his earbuds and actually interact with the offline world? Is he going to mope around the whole summer?
Well, he won’t be able to close the door and play video games for hours, considering he won’t have a door to close. Or a computer.
It should be an interesting summer.
I “completed” my 62 days in Ottawa. Surely I can survive a summer with a teenager in France.
I’m ready for it. France is only the beginning, after all…
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