Mapping the Gap

I’ve been reflecting on the Whys lately.  We are exactly four months into this Gap Year.  It’s a good time to check in.

In blog #2, I listed the heap of Whys behind this endeavour: appreciation of diversity, language exposure, global citizenry, autonomy from peer groups, fortifying the family unit, consideration of global religions, respect for various art forms, awareness of foreign affairs, problem-solving, sitting with boredom, becoming travel savvy, enlivening history. We’ve definitely touched on all of these… if not deep-dived.  Boldness of living has been a great success. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick…

The other Whys are a bit more hit-and-miss.  Privilege (which I still misspell) has been encountered and reflected on without too much intensity.  It’s probably a dish best served room temp.  Awareness of our advantaged existence has begun to dawn in different ways for each boy, I have noticed.  But I actually don’t expect this lesson to truly ripen until we hit home soil again.  It’s the return that seals this magic.  That’s when where-you’ve-been has an impact on how you perceive where-you’re-from.  That’s when you truly see.  That’s when we “arrive where we started and know the place for the first time,” as T.S. Eliot articulated it.  We will see what happens back home.  And further down the track too, no doubt.  So many seeds are being planted on this trip.  I think some will remain dormant for decades, but some are germinating now.  In fact, as my eldest was inspecting our new digs in North Macedonia yesterday, he said, “We don’t realise how lucky we are in Australia.”  I felt that little seedsprout pop straight through the fleshy earth of my mama heart. Woo-hoo. Tickity-tick.

On the other hand, the Why of my vocational direction hasn’t found any leads yet. I guess that’s not really a surprise.  It’s not like I’ve had my hands full in my vocation as full-time mother-teacher or anything.  It’s probably a matter to address on the other side of all this hubbub, anyway, when I am actually free to engage in some proper searching and actionable tasks. 

And, the Why of my second language deficit hasn’t been addressed yet either, but I’ve strolled all around the small Spanish district of my brain with Duolingo, and we have a good Spanish session on the itinerary ahead.  Gotta give it time.

Overall, there is a lot to call a success so far.  Lots of Whys ticked.  Lots of itches scratched.  We’ve had some seriously special times, blazingly more interesting than if we’d stayed home.  However -and this is a big, fat, fill-the-room “however”- despite all the great photos I’ve posted and all the clear learning experiences we’ve had, things are actually not well in our family.  What’s that expression?  “Wherever you go, there you are.”  Yeah.  That one.  Here we f*cking are. 

“Something Rotten” was another Why behind this Gap Year.  Before we left, we had been dealing with some serious struggles among our boys, “something rotten in the State of Denmark,” and some of the origins weren’t quite clear.  I had hoped that changing our situation would loosen some of the challenges my children were experiencing on the usual treadmill of life.  I had hoped that we could relax, that knots would release, that my boys could be free to be themselves and that this would soften the struggles they were clearly up against.  Maybe allowing them to get as much sleep as they need, letting them choose how to fill their days, giving them time to be guided by their natural interests would work some magic.  I thought removing peer influence, academic pressure, screen-time effects, and the scramble of after-school activities would help them settle.  

I knew our Gap Year wouldn’t fix anything we were dealing with per se, but nothing I was doing at home seemed to be helping, and I couldn’t tell what of the many variables was even contributing to their very symptomatic lives.  These boys had so many demands in the midst of their serious challenges.  I had hoped that changing environments would lead to some revelations and give some room for relief.  It has.  A little.  In some ways.  But alas, wherever we have gone, the challenges have trailed us.  In fact, in some cases, they are worse.  Some clarity has dawned, at least.

Due to this ongoing struggle, we have decided we will end our Gap Year early.  We fly back to Australia October 1^st. Flights have been purchased.  It’s decided.  Eight months will be enough for us.  We are in need of “a bigger boat.”  The teeth of these beasts are just too many and too varied to keep to the originally planned course. 

We only just made this decision, actually.  We had built in an escape hatch in our initial plannings, not plotting anything past Spain in August, for this reason.  We knew things might not go as envisioned.  We weren’t sure how we’d fare.  Over the past couple months though, we had grown in confidence.  We had thought we were going well.  We had started researching and designing our final months in Central America. Just a few weeks ago, we were buying visas for Cuba.  We have them in hand.  Day of the Dead in Oaxaca and the monarch butterfly migration near Mexico City were well-envisioned.  We had an AirB&B booking for Christmas in Antigua, Guatemala, too. We were just solidifying a plan to return in January 2026.  We were just about to buy our Madrid to Havana flight.

But, we’ve seen some dark days since then.  Days that have demanded answers.  Days that unearthed gaps in our coping.  Days that have revealed the uncalculated costs of being untethered.  Nope.  We have some different adventures ahead.  We will do the four months of travel we have already arranged and paid for, and then, we will head home to face some demons.  But, they will be demons we now better understand. That’s a win, partly due to the reign of focused mothering I had planned to enact on this trip. I’ve been taking notes. Literally.

I don’t mean to be vague in my references to “struggles” and “challenges.”  It is my children’s privacy that I safeguard.  But because I’d like to raise some awareness, I do want to share that one boy has a diagnosed condition called PANDAS (Paediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorder Associated with Strep).  I suspect another has it too.  It’s an awful condition, and it is not well understood, even by professionals.  Finding “PANDAS-aware” doctors is not easy.  This is a “flaring” disease in which symptoms are provoked by any sort of immune response activation.  It’s thought to be caused by the Strep bacteria.  The way Strep evades the immune system in the body is by mimicking the host’s cells.  The theory is that the child’s immature immune system gets confused when combating the Strep infection and starts attacking its own cells.  Hence the name, autoimmune.  It acts much like the autoimmune disease of Rheumatic Fever, which is also caused by Strep.

This neuro-assault on the child causes a motley crew of life-disrupting, family-upsetting symptoms.  Any sort of immune response or even just inflammation can cause a “flare,” which can last for weeks to months.  From allergies to standard illnesses, even vaccines, mould, and injuries can get a child and their family in trouble for a spell.  We just discovered in Vietnam that a jellyfish sting can have a massive and delayed immune response.  I realised this when a rash appeared at the site two weeks post-sting.  This explained some serious Exorcist nastiness at our less-than-luxury accommodation in Cairo.  Apocalyptic moments were had.   

PANDAS (and PANS – Paediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Syndrome -without identified Strep associated) is tricky and the treatments are mostly to prevent illness and reduce inflammation, getting rid of Strep if there is any.  Cognitive-behavioural therapy and some meds can be utilised, but it’s hard to even get diagnosed to get that far.  Symptom management is also a real challenge.  I’m on Facebook groups and read horrible stories about parents desperately trying to get symptom relief for their kids and teens.  These people are throwing everything they can at this: gut biome analysis, hair mineral tests, and all sorts of other expensive testing.  They are diving down all the rabbit holes, they are on all the waitlists, they have all the supplements, they are upturning every stone they can find to try to save their kids from the hell this disease can trap them in and the family inferno it can raise.  By comparison, our family has it easy, really.  If you are interested, you can research all about it: https://aspire.care/ “Carer burden is high,” you will find.  My partner and I can attest.  The sibling burden is too.  Seriously so.

So, that is one piece of this, but it is a piece we can hope will settle for a bit. Fingers crossed.  We are veterans. We have weathered these storms before and enjoyed long calms with normal-range boys.  Another piece of this, though, is that some people don’t like to travel.  Some people feel very stressed by it… like profoundly…overwhelmingly… viscerally distressed by it.  Some people are just more sensitive to the world around them, and it takes a whole lot of energy to process all that’s coming in.  We have one of those people among us, and he is not coping well.  He wants a home, and he wants it now.  He wants a routine.  He wants his familiar stuff.  He wants it yesterday.  Fair enough.  We must respect his disposition.  What to me is an enchanting year of world exploration to him is like being driven with a cattle prod down a never-ending game of Candyland that he didn’t have any interest in playing.  And the fact that we don’t actually have a home to go back to anymore can take a boy from distressed to distraught.  It’s been more upsetting than I had ever imagined.  But that’s not to say good times aren’t happening.  They are. We just keep circling back to anger and resentment, which leads to all sorts of super fun ways of expressing one’s self.

There is also more to our “pathologies” that needs investigation, layers I don’t understand, symptoms with no explanation, questions that beg and beg and beg, issues that need unpacking by professionals.  Consults with specialists are in order.  Testing.  Waitlists.  And we need our dog, Bronzie.  She had more of a therapeutic role in our lives than I had realised. We probably need family therapy, too.

In Family Systems Theory, the family is viewed as a system composed of interrelated parts, so a problem for any member of a family has an effect on all others and results in reactions and adaptations for each person.  This is the reality for all families, but as we are a family living in very close quarters with no breaks from one another, in foreign environments that are constantly changing with some serious sh*t going down in the mental health sphere, our “interconnectedness” is at a noxious level. Pathological enmeshment, we could say. 

Why did I think I was “simplifying” in this endeavour?  How could I possibly have thought world traveling would be calming and settling?  How naive and obtuse could I be? Hindsight is an arrogant, know-it-all bitch if you ask me.  But I’m taking notes from her unique vista.  And all this craziness is much better than the rut we dug ourselves out of back home. We always feel that is true, no matter how dark the day. We’d rather be anywhere but there.

Of course, I cannot even begin to sort out all that is going on in our family.  I am involved at every level and not qualified to track all the moving parts.  You can imagine what all this tricky business has done for my grand world-schooling plans too, right?  A dirty little number.  Luckily, I started this teaching path with a whole lot of grace baked into my expectations.  We do our best.  That’s enough.  Life is full of lessons we don’t plan.  We are learning those.

And then there’s video games, the Why of “tech slavery.”  We had totally forgotten about video games.  The older boys had commented more than once that they were glad they didn’t have them anymore.  All sorts of “touching grass” was happening, new interests, play born from boredom, all that.  It was glorious.  Yet, in a moment of weakness, post-Cairo and pre-road trip, I cracked open Pandora’s Box with a “creative” app for an upset little one and the slippery slope turned into a free-for-all.  I watched it happen like a near-death-experience from the ceiling of a hospital room.  To get us through the flares, I just let go.  In fact, I decided to let go for the whole month of May.  They don’t have their gaming devices, and I’ve kept their favs off-limits, so it’s not a full relapse.  But I kid myself.  They could still disappear for a day in the free apps an iPad can offer.  Desperate times.  I’m giving us grace. 

Come the 31^st of May though, they are back in the box for the next four months. I keep reminding the boys.  In the meantime, I am greatly enjoying the peace these games offer me and my partner.  And again, I’m taking notes on how this reintroduction of “interactive screen time” impacts each of us.  It’s definitely an effective therapeutic tool in the management of a PANDAS “flare,” and it’s definitely a parent coping instrument.  But in the absence of any effective symptom relief, it feels just fine to take whatever reprieve we can get.  I’m not into the martyr gig.

So, what to do for the next four months when we have no idea what emotional terrain lies ahead?  I’ve been reflecting on this.  A lot, you can imagine.  The answer?  Field notes.  I’ve been recording details on my phone for awhile, trying to piece together a clear picture of what’s happening with my boys.  Before I even knew what PANDAS was, I was acting as detective-inspector.  What are the triggers?  What are the warning signs?  What are the patterns?  What are the stages? What offers relief?  What are the exit ramps? What am I missing?  That was part of my consideration in massively altering the variables in our lives on this Gap Year.  Now, I plan to continue to study the behaviour of us.  What else can I learn?  I plan to strive to be objective, to pause my own emotional reactions, to observe and note what I see, to try various interventions and watch the outcomes that play out.  Like an anthropologist, I want to view what is happening with my family with a detachment that might allow some insights.  I pity the doctors and therapist upon whose doors I will knock in October.  I’ll have a hefty parcel to deliver.   These field notes will be massive.  An anthropological mother gone wild.

Of course, I’m working on healthily framing this change of plans for our boys.  We aren’t dragging ourselves home broken. We aren’t “failing” to complete our planned trip around the world.  We are rerouting.  Wisely.  We are tailoring the path to fit our evolving needs.  We are doing the right thing for the right reasons.  We are placing value on what is most important: listening to our people and to that inner voice of direction.  And we are remembering to be grateful for all that has passed and all that is yet to come.  Even just eight months living like this is a lifetime’s worth of good fortune. That isn’t wasted on us. 

There is a little disappointment about missing Central America, I can’t lie. I, more than any of us, really wanted this leg to happen. It was my baby. But, like my study abroad rerouting 25 years ago, I’m just going to package up that unfinished business as seeds for another epic adventure up the trail. We’ve tossed around the phrase “Gap Term.” Who knows?  Life often doesn’t go to plan. Let us teach these boys how to take it in stride.  With grateful hearts.  I mean, honestly, how can we complain? There is clear evidence that the fruits of privilege flourish even in the stormy gales of struggle. Beautiful living reigns supreme. You can see…