We’re doing it for our mom
When they lost a wife and mother to cancer, the Pearson boys set out on a global adventure to honour her.
Wearing his late mother’s purple Crocs, 11-year-old Sully sits astride a camel crossing the Thar Desert in western India.
His little brother Max, 8, rides beside him atop a second camel, laughing and squealing while their dad, Jason Pearson, leads the pack.
Pearson had done a similar camel safari with the boys’ mom Jane, long before they were born and long before her cancer diagnosis. The young couple hated it back then; the animals smelled, were bad tempered and a “nightmare” to ride.
But Sully and Max are loving every moment of this camel ride in April as they near the end of their globe-trotting adventure in honour of their late mom. And this time Jason Pearson enjoys it too.
“To see the excitement in their eyes, that’s always my favourite part,” Pearson says later by phone from the island of Boracay in the Philippines. They are on this piece of paradise to wash away the “chaos” and exhaustion of their visit to India.
“We’re definitely a bit of a mess on this trip, but that’s really the magical part.”
Sully has been wearing his mom’s Crocs since the three of them left Toronto eight months earlier. Despite being worn down, they are still his “footwear of choice” on the world tour in memory of Jane, who died on Christmas Day in 2008, when the boys were just 4 and 1. The Pearsons had always wanted to take their sons on this trip, similar to one Jane had taken with her parents at a young age.
When the trio left, the trip was a dedication to Jane: each memory, each laugh, made and shared with her in mind. Now, as they approach the end of their adventure, after visiting nearly 20 countries, they’ve learned to celebrate the family they are, the unit of three. “Oui Three,” they call themselves.
“We’ve all become each other’s best friends,” says Pearson. “It’s more our trip now, and we’re taking ownership in that.”
For Pearson, the trip is about watching everything — their adventures and new experiences — through the eyes of his boys. Like the day he saw Sully surf in New Zealand, when he zip-lined with Max in Laos, and the time he looked up from a boat in the Sulu Sea as the boys soared above on a parasail wing.
Still, “a wave of Jane” will hit every so often. That rush of memories hits when the boys ask if mommy would enjoy snorkeling or riding camels with them.
On her birthday in October, Jason Pearson was hit with another wave: the trio crammed in a shuttle bus with seven other passengers, sweaty, hot, tired and grumpy. Jane, he thought, would have smiled through it all.
Some days are difficult. “Those days I just need to remind myself to be where my feet are and really enjoy the fact that — hey, you know what? We’re travelling, the three of us, and we’re on the other side of the world, and we’re really just trying to have the time of our life.”
Jason Pearson saved hard over five years to fund the trip. He took part in the deferred leave program with the Halton District School Board where he is a Grade 5 and 6 teacher. He’s been home-schooling the boys so they don’t fall behind.
Jane’s parents have said it’s much quieter without the boys around, but they email regularly and met up with them in New Zealand for two weeks in January and in March for three weeks in Sri Lanka.
The boys are in the Middle East now. Next on their itinerary are Oman, Greece, Croatia, Italy, France, England and Iceland with just two months left in the trip. The boys will be back in Toronto mid-July in time to attend Camp Kitchikewana, the same camp their mother went to as a kid.
It’s another way for the boys, who were so young when Jane died, to remember their mom, like wearing the Crocs. When they learned she used to get her nails done, they too started to paint their fingernails. On a recent trip to the spa in the Philippines, they got a manicure and pedicure just like mom would have.
Solo-parenting around the world isn’t easy. Once Pearson lost Max for 15 minutes in a packed mall in Bangkok. He had gone to the bathroom and ended up riding an elevator “helping people get to all the different floors,” pretending he worked there.
“The days where I see them find a spot, settle in and escape into their own world of adventure and imagination, those are some of the best,” says Pearson. He has dubbed his young duo “imagination nation,” the reason was evident one April evening in the Philippines when armed with sticks, Sul- ly and Max cast spells at each other as the sun set over a Palawan island beach. “Expelliarmus!” yelled Sully, disarming Max, who regained his footing to fire back with “Crucio!” an “unforgivable” curse in wizarding lore, they explain later.
The round-the-world trip began on a beach eight months earlier when they played under cloudy skies in Cape Cod, Mass., preparing to embark on their yearlong memorial trip. Now they play for themselves too. Their mom Jane is still with them in the purple Crocs that Sully wears on his feet and the painted fingers and toes. But now, when a wave of Jane hits Oui Three, they let it crash and move forward.
Follow the rest of their travels online at WhereOurSidewalkEnds.com and on Instagram as @OuiThree3. Read the story about their departure on TheStar.com.