Thank God for Ma + Pa

This isn't one of my generic travel related posts.

I like to remind my parents, pretty regularly, about how lucky they are to have me - like last week when I saved them over $1000 in flight fares! But lately, I've been thinking a lot about how bloody awesome my parents are. It got me thinking about how every little thing they did for me growing up led me to be the person I am today. And, I am so damn lucky to have them!

Growing up I have always seen my parents as a team. Heaps of people often talk about how their mum would threaten discipline in the form of "wait until your father comes home". It could just be my bad memory but I never remember that being a threat....I always remember being shit scared of my mum and my dad whenever I did anything wrong! I never remember a time when I successfully played one parent off against the other. And I always remember loving my parents equally.

When Nathan (my brother) and I were younger we all moved from Napier to Palmerston North so dad could go to university. Outside of study he would walk us to and from school, he was there with us in the afternoons to check homework, and he would cook most of the meals. I had a stay-at-home dad and a bread-winner mum which was completely against the norm (and unfortunately still probably is). How cool is that?!

I don't have a lot of memories from when we first moved to Palmy, but what I vividly remember is that we lived in the crappiest house on the street. I'm talking a generic Palmy student shit-hole. The walls would drip with water, it was dark and glum, and the curtains were yellow. As time wore on every couple of years we would move to a new rental and up-grade in our housing standards. It wasn't until recently that I learned that the day my dad finished uni he paid off the entirety of his student loan. How many people can say they've done that?! Yeah, he had a wife earning money....but they also had two kids to support. The one piece of advise dad has given me over and over again in life is "live within your means". I'd be lying if I said I hadn't splurged on things I shouldn't have. But dad's advice wouldn't keep ringing in my mind every time I spend more than $10 if my parents hadn't practiced what they preached. They made plenty of sacrifices to get to where they are now and they sure as heck wouldn't have made it there if they had just gone and bought the two storey mansion down the road when we first moved to Palmy.

Mum and dad may have "deprived" me from material items but they certainly didn't from memories. Recently, I was sharing with some colleagues that every awesome memory from my childhood comes from the experiences my parents gave me. I do not have one single memory that links to a time I received a material gift my parents. What I could tell you about though, is story after story of my time spent out on Lake Taupo, on camping trips, visiting towns all over NZ, going for evening walks in the park, learning to water ski, going hiking, riding my first horse, and just spending time together as a family. I constantly think about how lucky this actually makes me. I often look at the students in my classes and wish that I could give them even one of these amazing memories I hold. For a lot of kids in NZ my reality is all but a dream.

As I got older I was definitely not always the angel child (although at times I sure would throw Nathan under the bus to help my cause). I went through my angry-girl teenage phase at around 13-14. I like to think of this time period as the years I truely tested my parents parenting skills. Mum and dad soldiered through. They put rules in place, set consequences, and followed through on their consequences (that's a whole seperate story!). They slowly removed rules as we got older and began letting us make our own choices. I sure made a lot of dumb choices....but I also made a bunch of right choices. The important thing was that they were my choices. What I will always appreciate is that mum and dad would encourage me to think about both sides of the story before I made a decision. Like when I told them I wanted to quit English (an important subject in their opinion) or when I said I wasn't going to go and study Architecture anymore or that I was going to quit competitive swimming. Making these decisions were easy, and I knew were right, because I had been taught how to think of the pros and cons of my actions. Because of this not once have I ever felt like I have let my parents down, I have always felt like everything I have done in my life has ultimately made my parents proud. And when I really needed mum or dad - like when I was drunk and in town with no money for a taxi at 3am - I always knew I could call them up and they would be there to pick me up.

I don't know where I would be if my parents had done even one thing differently in the way they brought me up. All I know is that they rocked it as parents and if I could even be half the parents that they are, I'd be pretty stoked.

I love you, Ma and Pa!