My sister keeps an unusual family portrait displayed on her living room table. In it, my father blows a tune on a baguette flute and I converse intently into a banana, while my mother attempts to pull one out of her ear. Behind us unfolds a spectacular vista of French vineyards and farmhouses, and the spindly finger of a church steeple. 

My parents had taken us, then in our teens, on a driving trip through southern France. We had stopped for a hillside picnic and, drunk with sunshine and a few drops of Beaujolais, descended into the joyous lunacy that was a standard feature of family vacations.

The picture is over ten years old now. But no matter how many times we have sat together for more carefully-arranged photographs, my sister will have no other. She says it captures the essence of our family.  It reflects our ability to have fun together and the unusual relationship we share. A relationship crafted partly, I believe, from the experiences we shared while traveling.

My parents, incorrigible wanderlusters, brought us along on their voyages since we were small. Growing up, I could gauge the stress of my mother's work life by the height of the travel brochures stacking up on our coffee table. Whenever things got unpleasant, she'd be on the phone planning dream vacations, then feign ignorance as a stream of literature rolled in to bury our living room in airbrushed photos of beaches, landscapes, skylines and sunsets.

We rarely made it to any of these places, but the brochures fed our collective imagination, and daydreaming about the next vacation became a family pastime. My parents were not of unlimited resources. But they understood -- as I grew to -- how a dollar spent traveling was worth $3 spent any other way. They made clear to my sister and me that by forsaking things the other kids got, like Nintendo sets and seasonal wardrobe overhauls, we got to go along on my parents' excursions.

Of course, by the time I was a teenager, most of my peers would have hocked their own Nintendo sets to avoid being dragged on the family vacation. To them, the annual excursion meant being marooned with Mom and Dad somewhere with the social life of a desert island. "Every year it was the same thing," laments one friend. "We'd do the Eastern circuit in a station wagon visiting our relatives.  Every year, I would say how much I really wanted to go to New Orleans. And every year, we wouldn't go, even though we were within two hours drive!"

At our house, everyone took part in the planning of the trip. We chose destinations where my sister and I would have enough "excitement" and peer interaction to keep us entertained, while my parents got the relaxation they wanted. Often, we travelled with or visited couples with children our age. As we got older, we went to places that offered nightlife -- a disco in the hotel or organized activities -- where my sister and I could safely go unchaperoned. During the day, if desires diverged, we would split up for a few hours, then reunite in the evening to recount our adventures.

At home, we functioned like your average family. But the minute we hit the road, suitcases in hand, most of the filial baggage was left behind.  My sister and I, faced with having only each other as playmates, shelved the better part of our rivalry. My parents, free from the demands of work and household, were at their happiest and most carefree.

We got to see "The Parents" in unusual situations: struggling with foreign tongues, finding their way in unfamiliar surroundings, awestruck at seeing something completely new. In sharing the thrill of discovery, we were brought closer as equals, and this helped break down the confines of our respective family roles. Often, we laughed with the ease of friends, like the time we tortured our taxi driver by singing Rogers and Hammerstein numbers all the way to the airport or pelted each other with olives at a roadside cafe. These moments were never quite forgotten when we returned home to the teenage/parent melodramas of everyday life.

But my parents gave me something else, something more valuable, in sharing their journeys with me. They gave me a gift that has enriched my life: the love of traveling.

I learned as a youngster not to fear people who looked and spoke differently. I was introduced to a world rich and vast in its plurality, unending in its potential for discovery. A world where your most basic assumptions can be challenged if only you journey far enough. I was also exposed, inevitably, to a world with slums and destitution and children who sleep in the streets. These realities, though terribly affecting as a youngster, profoundly shaped my perspective. A friend whose mother brought her to Morocco when she was five describes the experience this way. "What was jolting to me was the way hordes of children would come running up begging for money. ... It gave me the understanding at a really young age that life is not always the way it is at your town in the US. There are people out there leading totally different lives."

My parents may have had chance to regret infecting their kids with the travel bug. While most of my friends are putting down roots, my sister and I have spent our 20s in places with unpronounceable names, strange food and obscure diseases. Eventually, though, I'll settle down long enough have my own kids. When I do, I'm going to have the all-terrain kiddie-carriers, the junior-sized suitcases, the living room littered with travel brochures. I'm going to tote the kids to mountains and seashores, to bustling cities and rural villages. If I'm lucky, I'll be able to share with them the kinds of moments my parents shared with me. I'd like that family portrait.

Nicole R. Achs is a freelance journalist in Atlanta, GA who recently returned to America after three years living in the Czech Republic.