A Nester Leaves Home for Christmas

A travel tale featuring Egypt and Guatemala

Mothers feather nests

When I was little, my mother was a nester: She created spaces like a mother bird, ensuring my sister and I had the coziest pillows, homemade meals, and warm coats in winter.

As an adult, when I returned home for visits, my mother set out slippers and robes in the guest room and stocked the refrigerator with all of my favorite snacks. Invariably, a banana bread would be cooling on the kitchen counter.

I followed in my mother’s footsteps when I had two daughters of my own. They slept in footie pajamas to suit the weather, ate steamed carrots and homemade applesauce, and slept on organic sheets. While I loved feathering my nest, inside I struggled, as a massive travel bug lived near my diaphragm, wriggling every so often to make itself known.

Before having children, I traveled epically, adventurously, far, and often. As a Peace Corps Volunteer, I lived in a mud-brick house in West Africa, bathing from a bucket with water warmed on my camping stove and reading by lamplight in the evenings. Later, I traveled alone through Morocco and into Spain. As a newlywed, I visited Borneo, Cambodia, and Laos with my new husband, moving by bus across borders at night.

When we had children, my husband and I nested for a decade in our home in Oregon, raising our daughters in comfort, and they grew into typical girls with a slightly elevated curiosity about the world, due to their parents’ travels.

Birds are pulled from their nest

When my daughters were 10 and 12, we left home for a year of worldschooling, packing minimally: a few t-shirts, two pairs of shoes each, and shampoo bars. Yet, we each brought a couple of treats. My daughters carried stuffed animals; I had yeast packets for bread baking and American candy; my husband brought extra running gear.

And tucked away in a packing cube lay a few Christmas ornaments including our plush star for the top of our tree.

Apart from the stress around educating my girls, managing holidays and birthdays caused me the most anxiety. Our family had traditions at home, and to me, these traditions made up a childhood. When my own mother died, our family traditions, celebrated so consistently and so predictably that they carved canyons in my amygdala, were what I had left.

So even during an unparalleled year of international travel to 13 countries on three continents, the mother-bird part of me couldn’t eschew our traditions.

Christmas in Egypt

My family went to Egypt to join a worldschool hub, a planned gathering of traveling families. These hubs take place all over the world and look differently; some last just a week and others a few months. Some offer structured programming, while others invite families to the same town or village, coalescing a community to make its own choices about how to spend time together.

In Egypt, my daughters joined a dozen other children for six weeks of casual activities, while parents explored ancient ruins, wandered through dusty tombs still vibrantly painted, and worked when the internet functioned.

While my family continually pared down our belongings with each move from country to country, I paradoxically shopped in Egypt for Christmas, finding an English-language bookstore, chocolate, colored pencils, and modeling clay. I bought a plant, and we decorated it with the few ornaments from home, bestowing it a throne in the form of our only armchair.

On Christmas morning, I feared an onslaught of homesickness when my daughters spied a measly pile of gifts. While I value experiences over material items and communicate this to my girls, our tradition included lots of gifts, store-bought, homemade, and experiential. One might think that being in Egypt would be the greatest gift of all, but the instinct in children to covet tangible items cannot easily be dulled.

Thankfully, my daughters expressed joy and surprise at the modest pile of gifts and excitement over an experience my husband and I presented: a hot air balloon ride the following morning at sunrise.

One year becomes two

When we returned home after our year abroad, we held many discussions about braving a second year of travel, talking about what could improve, what to change, and how to afford another adventure.

And just a couple of months ago, we departed again. This year, we’ll celebrate Christmas in Guatemala, a country I’ve not visited before. Christmas traditions in Guatemala — treats, fiestas, celebrations around December 25 — remain a mystery to me. Yet, already, I’ve amassed a small pile of gifts in my current location, Peru: a knit hat, hair ties made of crocheted flowers, and local chocolate.

After all, the instinct to nest cannot easily be dulled.

Stephanie Tolk is the founder of Deliberate Detour, a company that supports traveling families in making their dreams come true. She’s a co-author of the new book, Worldschooling: Innovative Parents Turning Countries into Classrooms. Stephanie also has a comprehensive course called Worldschooling: A Comprehensive Guide to Long-Term Travel for those interested in the lifestyle.

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