Sooooooo, I need your advice. Have you ever taken your small children on vacation? I am preparing to do so...without a car top carrier and only the back of a station wagon to fill. Am I deluding myself into thinking this is going to work? How can I possibly pack up our circus and expect it to fit into one clown car? Are you laughing yet? You should be.
I can just hear the circus music now...roll tape of Jeff and I trying to pack up the car, speed up in places so that it looks like an old Benny Hill chase seen...minus the half naked women and police with their little cudgels and whistles...(and there isn't any chasing, only cramming, and more cramming)...
I have control issues, and I know that I must set them aside. I'm going to an unfamiliar vacation house, with people that I know but with whom I have never "vacationed", to a locale that doesn't have a washing machine, and I am bringing my familiar chaos to an unknown environment. I have lots of "What If's" and "Worst Case Scenarios" running around in my head. Most of them involve cranky children, exhausted, irritated and overwraught parents, ER visits to strange hospitals and defcon-worthy meltdown situations. Then there are simple questions that must be answered...
What should I put in our first-aid kit? How will bedtime be affected? Will somebody get sick and have to go to a strange hospital? Will they KNOW what to do there? Will it be the BEST possible care? Can I even allow them NEAR the ocean? What if one of the kids gets SWEPT out to SEA? What if they BOTH get swept out to sea, AT THE SAME TIME?!!!
And then there are the people with whom we are sharing our house. What if we RUIN their vacation?! What if I FAIL at a meal for some reason and they HATE my cooking? What if my DISRUPT their sleep?
"Oh bother," said Winne the Pooh.
Non sequiter. I know.
Bottom line: There WILL be chaos. There WILL be tantrums and crying....BUT there will also be MOMENTS OF JOY...even if I have to get out my microscope and FIND them. And THAT is why we are going on vacation. This isn't a vacation from "work" for me, but it's a change of environment, and THAT is what "vacation" looks like when you have small children. I will PURPOSEFULLY look for moments of WONDER and DELIGHT. I will BE DELIGHTED...hopefully, at some point.
We never went on vacation when I was little. I talked to my father on the phone this morning and regaled him with a portion of my litany of worries, and he said I am "doomed". (He WAS laughing when he said that by the way). Aye me.... I started to think I could end this post on a high note of HOPE and an Everything's-going-to-be-OK-You'll-see note of optimism. But I know better. I just have to reconcile myself to the fact that I will not return well-rested and relaxed, but more in the manner of a pile of rumpled laundry that has been tumbled dry on high heat, with a pair of sneakers kicking it over and over and over....until the buzzer finally sounds and it comes to rest in a shrunken, wrinkled heap, left to cool so that it's no longer too-hot-to-handle.
That's me. Too hot to handle. Riiiiiiiiiiiight.
NEEEEEEEXT!
Oh, I so relate. You know this of course. Soooo... I'll answer a few. We always pack a fever reducer- for the "what if" middle of the night spike of a fever. And I always have a few bandaids, gauze, and even a wrap for the really big boo-boo sort of thing (but this is because i was trained in response to emergency for a camp, and imagine wilderness-style survival situations... ha)--- And yes. Play in the ocean- holding them. Let yourself see the delight in their faces, and have it become yours. And by all means, ask for help when you get home if you feel overwhelmed.
ReplyDeleteI bet you'll be tired, but grateful you decided to do it.