Bleary eyed, grumpy and wondering whether I should try and do a Kevin McCallister and wander on to a flight to fucking anywhere there was also another emotion that had me in its grips…excitement.
While I may have been less than ecstatic about the middle of the night airport run alarm call robbing me of three hours of my beauty sleep, as I pulled up to DXB I realised I didn’t care. I was going to be ugly and tired for the foreseeable, but who really gave a fuck when it was all the price you had to pay to welcome your family to the golden city of Dubai!
Don’t worry I know exactly what you are thinking…border control must be majorly slacking these days.
Regardless, my favourite human beings in the whole wide world had managed to smuggle themselves from what some people describe as the Dubai of Scotland (nobody, nobody has ever described Glasgow in such a way…) to what is actually the Dubai of, well, Dubai! Not only had they managed to smuggle themselves in but, as all family members seem to do, they had managed to smuggle in some heavy duty contraband including: square sausage, Irn Bru, all things chocolate, cheap ass toiletries and more tampons than a vagina could possibly ever need.
It truly was like Christmas had come early and with half of the chocolate already consumed in the first hour of our reunion, while a tampon was being used to clean up an Irn Bru spillage (I needed to get rid of them somehow…) I felt re-fueled and ready to go for the week ahead.
You see, when any family members or friends visit, while it is the best of times, it is also the most tiring of times – that’s the correct quote from Dickens, right? Especially when it is their first time visiting. Not only do they want to see everything but you also want to show them everything. To show them what this crazy place is like that you now call home; to make them a part of your world and see the life you have built for yourself and, most importantly, because you want to build as many amazing memories with them as you possibly can as who knows when the next time it will be that you will see one another (a month later at Christmas but still…).
However, there is just one teeny, tiny little detail that adds an element of difficulty in achieving all of the above and that is that you still gotta earn that coin honey! One day I will get paid for simply being fabulous.
Yip, UAE visitor exhaustion is real with it claiming over 50 victims a week (facts are Wikipedia approved). Because as you wine, dine and forget about the time with your nearest and dearest, that 5.30am work alarm clock creeps closer and closer until it whacks you like an unexpected RTA fine right in the face! And while they recharge at whatever stunning pool day you have recommended for them, after getting up 6 hours later than your own alarm clock, you – on the other hand – have to deal with children asking you 50,000 times if you are unwell because of the smudged mascara under your eyes and the birds nest on top of your head before pep talking with yourself in the staff toilet mirror ahead of meeting your family for tourist activity 563829.
But, the exhaustion really is a small price to pay.
You see, one of the biggest concerns I had when I first moved from the bonny banks of Scotland was the impact it would have on my relationships with not only friends but my family also. Would we become distant? Would we still connect as seamlessly as we had? Would we manage to find a way to communicate our very different lives to one another while still being an integral part to it? Would we still understand one another: them with their ear bleeding Weegie accents and me with my newly refined expat voice?
However, the answer to all these questions was very quickly answered as soon as I embraced both my mum and my sister as I collected them from the airport. That same familiar grip of comfort and security and home that all screamed – nothing has changed. That distance does not determine our bond and never will. In fact, it will only strengthen it. And in many ways, it did.
As we went from activity to activity, whether it was a fancy brunch, a visit to EXPO (remember when we all did that?) or sipping a vodka coke on the balcony as my mum and sister let their pot noodle-esque curly hair dry (hopefully they don’t kill me when they read this) I felt like the distance had made our interactions with one another more purposeful. It had made us realise that we needed to cherish the time we have with one another and really be present in the moment.
So, as I waved them away at the airport with more bags under my eyes than Pablo Escobar, a wave of both sadness and happiness came over me. Happiness at the beautiful memories we had made and sadness that they had to come to an end; yet I felt content.
Content in the knowledge that although we lived separate lives it didn’t change anything. And content that I knew, without a doubt, they would already be looking at flights for their next visit out just as I was looking at flights for my next visit to Scotland.