traveling with children (formerly known as vacation)

Traveling with smalls is never easy.  Smalls usually ask way too many times how long it's going to take to get to wherever you are going.  Smalls also have a need to use the restroom at the most inconvenient times.  Inevitably, a small's hunger is inversely proportionate to how easily food is acquired, meaning:  if a small is hungry, there usually is no food around.

And while all of the above is challenging with smalls, nothing can compare to the actual travel itself. Namely, airplanes.  Oh yeah, and the irritating people you sometimes have to sit next to.

Take my most recent flight.  It was a red-eye and I was stuck as the odd man out; the only one not sitting next to a family member.  Instead, I was sitting next to a gentleman who slept the entire flight.  His eyes closed upon taxiing for take off, and didn't open until the seat belt sign went off upon landing.

Quite incredible.

Now, this gentleman clearly was not concerned with his airplane neighbors.  He hogged the armrests, splayed his legs open, and generally took up way more space than he was allotted, without regard for his cramped flight companions.  Miserable.

Nowadays, the average seat size, width, and distance from the other seats is meant for someone the size of Tiny Tim, which may be generous, considering that the smalls seemed miserable too.  I remember looking over at my smalls mid-flight, checking to see if they were ok.  They were squirming and shifting, complaining that they had no room and that they were so uncomfortable.  Wow, if THEY were uncomfortable, clearly we adults were going to be crippled.

Airplane travel nowadays is definitely an international Abu Ghraib.

Upon landing we had to go through customs.  The smalls were tired, not understanding why we had to wait on line.  And they were whining.  Oh, how they were whining!  We had a melt down at the car rental counter, and then the drive to our destination was charming.  And while we knew the smalls were tired and could barely help themselves, we were tired too, and on our very last nerve ending.

Not a good combo.

We made it to the house where we were staying; the melted turquoise Caribbean Ocean was calling and we all went to the beach to recharge. As I watched the smalls frolic, building sand castles, squealing with joy, it felt worth it -- the hell of traveling, and the hell of traveling with smalls.

Almost.

Suddenly the sibling fighting began, complaints of hunger ensued, and I realized that it was really just like at home.  It was just like home -- except with a good backdrop.

this is it?

After many sleepless nights, endless stressing, and various "what if" scenarios, I quit my job.  Or rather, I quit my career.  I blew it up with a metaphorical hand grenade.

People thought I was nuts.  Some still do.

My son was 3.5 and my daughter was 1.  I had juggled conference calls, meetings, and deadlines since the moment they were born.  At the time, I felt so under pressure that I could barely breathe, and now that I was able to breathe, I didn't remember how.  In hindsight, I think during the transition I created pressure so that I could just get things done:  HURRY, we have to get to the market.  QUICK, in the car, I don't want to be late...  We have to clean-up your room NOW, before we get ready for dinner...

The first year was honestly like a debriefing period.  I needed time to decompress.

And then the second year, it hit me -- what the hell was I doing?  Was I just a taxi service, short order cook, referee, therapist, nurse, laundress and maid?  Well, yes.  Apparently, I am.  I struggle daily with accepting that this is how life is now.  Not forever, but for this moment.

Reconciling this ain't for sissies...

That's why I started blogging.  Not to prove anything, or to get anything, but so I didn't go crazy and start believing the most important thing I had to express was whether or not X gym class for kids was better than Y gym class, strategizing battle on the latest diaper rash, or researching whether tea tree oil really does prevent lice.

Surely there was more to my life than this.  Had I become that uninteresting? Please, someone just shoot me.

I created the blog, because I decided that I needed some external validation.  Working life gave that to me every day...  Mommy life, if you're lucky, gives it to you once every six months, and that is usually in the form of some back-handed compliment from a competitive Uber-Mom type.  Not very satisfying.

Sometimes my smalls make me crazy, and the job of being a Mom is beyond stultifying.  But, I'm raising my kids.  They are being shaped by me, the good and the bad.  I am not missing out on their proud moments or their tantrums.  I get to watch them hurt and watch them heal.  I'm discovering their virtues and their vices, and slowly I'm starting to see the fog thin and a picture of who they really are become clear.  When one of my smalls hears or sees something funny and then looks at me, their eyes smiling, sharing their humorous thought just through a glance, or when one tells me they love me, but then adds for emphasis,"so, so very much" and I know they really mean it.   I love those moments...

Hopefully when the curtain of my life begins to close, I will look back on this mundane time and see that it was, strangely, the most beautiful because it was just every day. This is my gift, to them and to myself.

So, here I am.  Writing to prevent insanity.  It's as good a reason as any, I suppose.  I know I should write more often.  I should really set time aside and make it more "regular" than I've managed to do thus far. It's just that I'm still schlepping kids to 2 different schools, the house, the dog, lunches, the list goes on and on.  And when it's over, I'm tired.  I mean really wiped.  Jesus, I could barely decide between Pampers or Huggies.

But, I figure it's good to have something to strive for, and given it's November, I'm gonna need a damn New Year's resolution anyway...

you like me, you really like me...

Long ago, in a galaxy far away, I was a screenwriter in Hollywood.

It was a nice life.  There were ups, there were downs, but all in all, it was a good gig.  In my life prior to smalls, I rocked it.  Not all the time, but enough of the time to keep my ego satisfied.  I had an agent and a manager, a lawyer and an accountant.  I had meetings and lunches.  I knew who was who.  All the things that make one feel established, legitimate -- real.  It's only when the external validation is gone that one realizes that it was a pretty sweet perk.

Nowadays my life is perk-less.

Motherhood isn't filled with too much external validation.  No -- most of the time is spent second guessing yourself, dealing with other freaked out Moms, some of  whom are weird or competitive or the parent of a loathsome child who managed to just bite your small and punch them in the face.  See, not a lot of ego involved...  More the controlling of id.

When I made the very difficult choice to stop working I wasn't thinking about validation at all.  I was thinking about stress, and that I could barely breathe, and that if I really wanted to do the job "right" and be all that I could be, I'd have to see my children a lot less.  I might have humored that, but I wasn't seeing my children very much already, which didn't leave much wiggle room.

Basically, I was doing everything sorta fine.  Not great, not good, just "eh".  I was in damage control mode.  Kid sick?  Take 'em to the Pediatrician, stat!  Rush back to work.  Check.  Crisis at work?  Conference calls, wringing of hands, crisis averted.  Check.  Husband?  Ships that pass in the night.  Schedule date night, try and re-connect.  Check.

Week after week.  Month after month...

No one was happy with me.  As I tried to spread myself to cover all my obligations, everyone felt short-changed.  Especially my smalls.

This went on for a long time.  Through the premature birth of my first small, his hospital stay, evaluations, and therapy.  And then the birth of my other small, and through her first year.  I tried.  I really wanted to have it all.

Apparently, though, my Mother was right : You can have it all, just not all at the same time.

It took me awhile to really get that, and then, it took me even longer to own it.

One night, after a particularly grueling day, I was on the phone venting and lamenting to my Mother.  At the end of my diatribe I remember saying, "Ya know, when I'm 80, sitting on my porch thinking about my life, I'm not going to be thinking about how many screenplays I've written or how much money I've made -- I'm gonna be hoping that my kids talk to me and that they're happy, and that they're leading productive lives..."  There was a very, very long silence on the other end of the phone, and then my Mother said, "That's one of the sanest things I've heard you say in a very long time..."

I quit the next day.


****  I have more to say on this topic, but for now, I'm saying, "Put a pin in it..."

breathe...

I've been thinking a lot lately about stress.  More specifically, about my stress.  September is a tough month, all the back-to-school stuff, getting back into old routines, starting new routines, feeling tired...

After my third call in the car this afternoon, as I rushed to pick-up my 1st small from school, and then hurried to pick up my 2nd at another school, it dawned on me: progress has pretty much screwed up our lives.

Now, don't get me wrong, there are luxuries of the past century which I fully embrace; namely, air-conditioning.  I'd tolerate an outhouse easier than I could live without air-con, but that's just me.  My aversion to being hot is one of my Husband's greatest pet peeves.  Shoot me.

Anyway, as I was winding my way through traffic (which I've concluded is created by bad drivers), I started thinking about how my life, and in turn the life of my smalls, is really a giant stress-ball created by cell-phones, answering machines, chain super markets, and pedophiles.

Now before you write me off, let me convince you...

The cell phone, answering machine thing is a no-brainer.  All of us are available 24/7.  The car ride is no longer a peaceful journey, it's an opportunity for someone to ring you or for you to ring them.  Who can pass up the chance to cross off phone calls from their "to do"list?  And friends?  Forget about it.  If I can't call you from the road, in between schlepping smalls, then we ain't talking.  My life as a glorified taxi driver necessitates chatting while in the car.  Period.

Moving on.

Chain super markets.  All of them suck.  They have the most time consuming and irritating parking lots ever!  There is no such thing anymore as a quick run to the store.  There's no neighborhood butcher, baker, market.  Nothing.  If I need 30 items or 1 item, it doesn't matter; I still have to brave the parking lot, the check-out lines, and to add insult to injury, the CONSTANT moving of merchandise so that products never stay in the same place more than a week.  Infuriating!

Then there is the pedophile.  Or, more truthfully, the fear of such a person.  The "progress" of the internet and the media has made sure we all hear the awful stories of abductions and worse, so that, now, parents are either too scared to leave their kids alone or too scared that Child Protective Services will pay them a visit if they do.  Insanity.

Perhaps I'm romanticizing the past.  There were lots of downsides.  Polio, for example.  Definitely not good.  So, the "progress" of a vaccine for that awful disease is a win.  I get it.  And car seats, a wonderful safety bonus, even if putting the damn thing in is like wrestling a tiger.

But, it's the moments of silence that we're all missing.  No beeping microwave, no beeping dish washer, no buzz of the dryer.  Way back when, if you were out doing errands and someone wanted to get a hold of you, they called your house.  If you weren't home, they tried again later.  No message, no ringing in the car, or store, or street.  Kids played outside, unsupervised, with no parental guilt or fear.  The neighborhood market was just down the street, you really could pop in and get a quart of milk; no one would call you on the way there, and there wouldn't be a message reminding you of the call you missed when you got home.  Weekends must have felt more weekend-y.  Down time must have felt slower and more restful.  Kids must have been less scheduled because they played stickball or kick-the- can everyday after school with the other neighborhood children.  Pedophiles existed, but no one worried about them because they didn't hear about it all the time.

Bliss.

Call me a dinosaur.  But as I deliver children to and fro, from one school to another, to soccer practice and Gymnastics class, rushing home for piano lessons, making phone calls on the way, taking care of business in between errands, I can't help but wax nostalgic.  And even though I have the power to turn off my cell phone, I, apparently, bow to peer pressure and neurosis.  Maybe it's the nagging feeling that I'm missing something or that someone is trying to get me.  What if a small gets sick at school?

I fear I'm a lemming.

Damn, what I wouldn't give somedays for the return of the "busy signal".

find a penny, pick it up

Both my smalls have recently developed an obsession for picking up "found" money.  You know, lucky pennies, nickels, quarters and dimes randomly laying on the ground.

At first, I thought the "lucky penny" thing was exactly that -- lucky.  But as the days and weeks of this new monetary fascination has continued, I've realized that there is, apparently, a lot of money on the ground.   A LOT.

Like, one of my kids finds coinage EVERY time we go somewhere.  Every time! Which got me thinking...

Where the hell does it all come from?

I mean, maybe if I looked down at the ground every second like my smalls are doing nowadays, I'd have found a lot of lost money too.   How much money had I walked past in my life, oblivious to it laying on the pavement, just waiting for someone to claim it?  And if I didn't see all the money that has potentially been laying on the ground, well, then what else was I missing?

This has really troubled me.

How were my kids finding all this money?  Is the key in the actual looking?  Do they will it to appear?  Is there a fairy that sprinkles coins throughout the city, like treasure, waiting for it to be found by children such as my own?

At first I felt guilty letting my kids keep all the money they were finding, because, frankly, there was a lot of it.  It wasn't that it added up to a large amount of dough, per se, it was that it wasn't really theirs to begin with.   That money had belonged to someone else, and it felt strange collecting so much of something that was lost without having a way to find it's rightful owner...  Then there was the feeling that the kids didn't need the change as much as someone else might.  Somehow it just felt like dirty money, even though it's discovery couldn't have been more innocent.

I've been troubled by this too.

But, my smalls enthusiasm, their exuberance in finding a nickel, penny, quarter or dime has eased me into apathy.  Every errand has the prospect of a treasure.  Every schlepp leads to potential coin lotto.  Piggy Banks are filling, found money is being saved, and wish lists (a by-product of this found $$) are being thought of and compiled.  With every journey, there is an excitement in the air!

I wonder if the people who dropped their money have any idea the joy they've created?  That penny that was too much of a hassle to look for, that sneaky quarter that jumped out of your hand at the parking meter, or the rogue nickel that wouldn't stay in your pocket...

Thank you.

You have ignited curiosity, determination, and pride in a 7 and a 4 year old.  I assuage my guilt by knowing that those feelings are worth more than anything the penny, quarter, dime or nickel would have bought at, say, 7-11.

cialis, wtf?

Ok, this is real life.  Real life in the Advertising age:

"Mom, why does someone have bathtubs outside?"  my small asked.  At the time, I had absolutely no idea what the hell he was talking about, so I think I gave him the standard answer I always give when my smalls want to know why this or that is "different"...  "Everyone has different taste, sweetheart.  That's why life is interesting".

It sounds like an answer out of a book.  Whatever.

Anyway, I had no idea what he was talking about (or at least, I think this is what he was talking about) until last night...

Cialis.  Know what that is?  Well if you're a guy, and your beard is turning gray, in addition to the hard parts getting soft, Cialis might be your friend.  Translation:  It gets parts working so that sex is possible.

Now, it seems logical that to advertise such a product would require the allusion to sex: Romantic scenarios, like two people in a jacuzzi, a romantic dinner, all the trite situations that say, "SEX".

Never, not in my wildest dreams, has it ever occurred to me that claw-feet bathtubs are sexy.  It has also never occurred to me that someone sitting alone in a claw-foot bathtub staring into space says, "Sex".  And surely, 2 individuals sitting side by side in parallel claw-feet bathtubs, staring out at the ocean, could NEVER be a euphemism for sex.

Ever.

Not even holding hands across the separate bathtubs (as they try to do in the commercial) can solve that.  They're sitting in 2 separate bathtubs, people!   What you wanted to make people think of, associate, or come to mind would have happened in ONE bathtub.

Not to mention, who the hell has 2 bathtubs outside on a deck overlooking the ocean anyway?  Who?

Clearly, advertisers have lost they're minds or they've forgotten how to "do it".

mom, I feel sick..

There are many trying ailments that one must confront when raising a small.  Colds, flu, lice (yuck!), and the dreaded, always inconvenient when it appears, stomach flu.  There have been many nights when I have been awoken only to find myself knee deep in laundry and puke.

Not fun.

However, nothing thus far had prepared me for my most recent challenge: public puking.  Now all of us have felt the creep of nausea at one time or another.  It is an awful feeling, and unless one is pregnant, you usually can excuse yourself and attempt to hurl in private.  Or at least in an alley or a bush or something. Not smalls.

You see, the line between feeling sick to your stomach and actually puking, is, for a small, a very, very narrow one.  Kind of like drinking on an empty stomach; suddenly tipsy quickly turns the corner to drunk.  This is a similar scenario for the nauseous small.

So, let me set the stage for you: family vacation, very nice restaurant (Mom and Dad were treating themselves and dragging the smalls along), very crowded restaurant, very far away bathroom with said bathroom separated from our table by, like, 50 tables, and no easy access to the outdoors.

You see where I'm going here?

Conveniently, we had just finished dinner and my husband had just taken my son to the restroom -- he always manages to miss the drama.  Suddenly, my 4 year old daughter gets up from her chair and walks over to my side of the table and announces, "Mom, I feel sick".

Now as any Mom knows, there is something psychic about Motherhood.  A Mom can tell by their child's voice, or look in their eyes or something, that things are about to get serious.  Or, at least interesting.

We were there.

I asked my little one if she could make it outside.  She shook her head.  I asked if she thought she could make it to the bathroom.  She shook her head again.  And I could tell by the look on her face, that time was now of the essence.  I looked at the table, trying to remember if there was a bowl or a bag -- why the hell would there be a bag -- I was grasping at straws.  And then, almost reflexively, I reached for a crisp, white, cloth napkin.

And my girl, God Bless her, did what she had to do.  3 napkins full, to be exact.  And she did it with silence and grace.  Really.  I don't recall in all of my decades on this planet seeing anyone vomit as undramatically as she did.  Yes,  I am grateful for small blessings.

When she was done, she asked me why everyone was staring at her.  Thankfully, I had my back to the room and I didn't have to meet anyone's gaze.  Because, even though it was gross, and even though it was completely unappetizing, what could I do?  The human body does what it does when it has to, and no one, not even Emily Post can make it abide to any rule.  So, I told my little one that she shouldn't worry; people were staring at her because they wanted to make sure that she was alright and they wanted her to feel better.

Sometimes, all you can do is tell a white lie to protect a small.

When my husband returned with my son, he quickly figured out what had happened, which wasn't hard considering my daughter (who was now feeling fine) announced quite cheerily, "Guess what?  I threw up!" as if were just another exciting adventure on our trip.

I clued the Busboy to our "problem" and suggested that he throw away the napkins.  Whether he did, I have no idea, but I like to think so.

Later, after the kids were asleep, my Husband told me he was impressed with my quick thinking.  Napkins.  Genius.

Normally, I like to take credit for my ingenuity.  But the truth is, it was some sort of maternal instinct, honed over thousands of years; not me.  I just reacted.  And while I dazzle in a myriad of other ways, that night I followed in the footprints of all the Moms who came before me.  Moms who had to endure much more than I have ever had to.  Moms whose quick thinking may have saved their smalls life, like my own Mother had to, once upon a time.  Mom's who didn't care that everyone was staring...

Oh yeah, and I really liked the skirt I was wearing.