Down under or just around the corner...it's all the same in the head of a six year old.

I'll never forget when my parents told me, at the ripe and maybe not so bright age of six, that we were moving from Montreal to a foreign but, at the same time, familiar sounding place called Peterborough. How cool was that going to be I thought to myself. We were moving to a new city, a new province (whatever that was), and we were actually going to live in a place that was named after my father! Ahhhhh, the naive, wonderful, and small-world view of a child!

But come on! It made perfect sense. How would I have known anything different? I was six! If my dad, Peter, told me that were moving to Peterborough then who else would the city be named after!!!?? It didn't matter that I probably didn't know what it meant to move either. And why would my parents even bother to try to sort me out and correct this bold assumption? If I thought we were moving to a place that was named after my dad, then why not, especially if it would in anyway mitigate the culture shock of the move itself. How more safe could you feel than to move to a place where, in your mind, your dad was the king, mayor, and founder all rolled into one?

It is with this memory in mind that I consider our own two sons' impending transition to a life down under. Many, many people have kindly asked about Colin and Alex and whether or not they are excited about the trip. And though they may truly be very excited, or nervous, or freaking out, or sad, or complacent it is very hard to tell or say. Moving to Australia it would seem is little different than going to the park or the corner store. They have their moments of excited banter or sad reflection. But they are fleeting and most often only come after some prompting from an adult. It's almost at the point where they have developed a standard answer to that standard question - not trying to be rude or smart - but just saying what it seems the adults are wanting to hear. 'Yeah, kinda." Colin will say to the question of his excitement level or "Nooooo!" Alex will scream if someone tries to pin him down on his level of anticipation. It is all very natural and nice and normal but I also worry at times if it shouldn't mean more to them and whether or not we have done enough to really prepare them for the shock that inevitably will come.

I am reminded of the time I was driving with a friend to his cottage which was about 30 minutes outside of the city and I remember feeling like it was taking forever - a day at the very minimum. I was 10 or 11 at the time and I really thought that trip was never going to end. Now, as an adult I know exactly how far it is. I know this because I am the one I driving it. I am the one in control. I know the speed, the turns, and I am always in control of how I get there and when I get there. I have done it hundreds of times. I had none of that the first time I travelled to that cottage as a young passenger.

Distance and time therefore would seem to have something to do with one's ability to apply a sense of relative experience and context to the situation.

As a six year-old, we have very little of that sense of context to bring to what we are experiencing or what we might experience in the future - around the corner or around the world. The world is what it is and we only deal with it when our eyes open and the sun or rain invite us to react and live within the here and the now.

Obviously, every day, we get a little older and a little more experienced in terms of figuring out how long, how far, how much, how little, the world has to offer us. We soon figure out that Peterborough is not, in fact, named after our father. We build a consciousness that helps us to figure out exactly what it means to fly to Australia - although I'm not sure I'm there myself! The question for me as a parent, and as the one who is "inflicting" this experience on my children, is that when I can press a button on Google Earth and in 10 seconds fly from Toronto to Melbourne, have we in some indirect way made the world too small for our children? And though seeing where they are going to live online may be good for their six year-old psyche or my own piece of mind a week before departure, I think what I really want for my sons is for them to appreciate the true vastness of the world and its amazing diversity. I do want them to be truly excited when asked about the trip, scared even, wondering when the plane ride will ever end - because then, and only then might it seem that we have left our home, we have gone on a real adventure, far beyond anything a computer could ever show us and that the experience is bigger, further, and better than anything their six year old (or my forty-two year old) brain could ever imagine.