Meet the parents...in Fiji

Today I am welcoming my first Canadian visitors to Fiji. No, my first guest isn’t my brother, my best friend or even my beloved girlfriend – it’s my parents: Mike and Debbie Carruthers
That’s right; the two people who have spent the most time with me during my 25 years of life are travelling 12,000 kilometres across the world to get their daily dose of Dale.
It’s strange to think that as I write this they are on an Air Pacific 747 flying over the ocean at 900 kilometres an hour. I wonder if they get nervous when the plane hits vicious turbulence, like I did. I wonder if they know how to work their personal headrest televisions – a feat I never accomplished. I wonder if they, too, are stricken with a debilitating case of airplane insomnia, like I was.
While I am doing all of this thinking, I realize something: I worry about my mom and dad.
I’ve already arranged to have a driver pick them up at the airport because I’m concerned they won’t have what it takes to haggle with cabdrivers who always try to overcharge foreigners. I fret about my parents walking around Suva alone. I fear they will be attacked by one of the many stray dogs. I wonder if they will be able to handle the jetlag, the pollution, the heat, the mosquitoes – the country.
What the hell am I doing? I sound like my mom. Wait, now that I think about it she always told me that I would turn out like her.
Then I remember that my parents aren’t totally incompetent. They’ve travelled before. These are the people who would drive down to New Orleans every summer before Katrina struck. And the Big Easy ain’t so easy. This is the couple who spent time in Jamaica in the 80s – and actually stepped foot outside a resort. Hell, my dad grew up in East London.
So what am I so scared of?
I need to just sit back, relax and enjoy the next two weeks with my parents.
I guess my mom was right, after all. She has a habit of doing that sometimes: being completely wrong at the time but totally on the mark in the end.