Dining with Squirrels

We took our yearly February trip to Florida last month. Neither Karl nor I can wait for the kids’ school’s official spring break, which happens in April. February is our winter breaking point. If we don’t see sun and green, things start to seem undoable. So, for the past few years we have taken advantage of excellent accommodations and concierge service at my parents’ house in Tampa.

This year, we did something different. Karl indulged a plan I hatched a few years ago to take the kids to Disney World. I remember being about their age when mom and dad first took us, Andy’s Rule being that you can go if you can walk all day. Ben and Lucy can definitely walk all day, even if Ben will deny it, and I will admit I find myself needing a bit of excitement. The twist to this family vacation is that we invited my parents to come with us.

Years ago, Karl and I realized a voodoo curse had been placed on vacations we attempted on our own. I offer as evidence our bejeweled trip to Santa Fe b.k. (before kids), meant to be a sort of second honeymoon as our first was (more evidence) a total disaster, if you count the bride unconscious for 3 days, ravaged by strep, a disaster. As our plane touched down in Santa Fe, we craned our necks for glimpses of sorrel-scattered hills and honeyed sunrays spilling over adobe rancheros. It was snowing. Then, in what was surely an unconscious act of retribution, Karl got sick and spent the entire vacation in bed.

After those trips, we decided to either visit people we know or take other people with us, people with better travel juju, and perhaps hardier constitutions. This has worked beautifully. Our trip to Italy with the LaGrands two summers ago was illness-free and lots of fun. They apparently have excellent trip karma and we will be using them again. Our visit to the Harlems of San Francisco was perfect in every way until they left us at the airport unsupervised, at which point some seriously bad travel voodoo took over and we found that we were exactly 24 hours late for our flight home.

So, for our Family Trip To Disney, we invited Grama and Grampa to come with us, hoping to confuse the gods of travel, averting untold disaster — attacks by Mickeys-gone-bad, children lost in Tomorrow Land, freak snowstorms in Orlando. They were meant to be our amulets against bad, bad travel.

Here’s our other rationale for Travel With Others: as Karl and I have traveled with or to other people that we love, the bigger rewards have been twofold: the shared experience with those we love and who we are when we are with them. Example: we love the LaGrands. We’ve known them for over 20 years and see them a lot. But how many of you have spent 10 hours on an airplane with such dear friends? Or slept in the same tiny apartment with 6 kids and cooked every meal together? Or tried to grocery shop via phrase book with them? Just a note if you try: even if you don’t understand the repeated announcements over the grocery intercom, once the store starts looking very, very empty, you may assume it’s closing time. Somehow, with a friend, that was very very funny.

To be frank, Karl and I are better people when there are witnesses. We try harder. We’re kinder, more patient, more interested, more interesting. Our kids too. On that same trip to Italy, we started borrowing 8-year old Helen and putting her between Ben and Lucy in the back seat. Voila! Better than a dvd player or a mediation counselor.

So we were partly using my parents — hey, who doesn’t do that?! — but also wanting to be with them, to share with them that concentrating experience of every day, all day together. Because honestly, when my parents are in town, getting them into our house for more than a few hours is not likely. Some inner alarm goes off inside my father and it’s suddenly time to go. The last time my mother spent the night in my house was when Ben was born. Thanks again for that Mom. The Mommy Cavalry.

Once again, the DeBoer-Swedberg Vacation Protocol worked. I don’t think Ben and Lucy could have been nicer. I felt like I might be willing to move to Disney World if they would only get along like that forever. I did notice a clause in the hotel bill prohibiting taking up residence [I'm serious!], so I’m guessing this has worked for other families too. Sharing that vacation with our kids was great. Watching them share it with their Grampa and Grama was a whole ‘nother layer of celebrating. Disney is BIG on celebrating. When I made our reservations, the agent wanted to know what we were celebrating. Stifling other, less magical answers, I said “my mother’s birthday,” which, sure enough, produced an enthusiastic greeting at our hotel. There are little button booths throughout the parks where you can pick up buttons to broadcast your personal celebration: “Just Married,” “Sweet Sixteen,” “First Visit To Disney.” When Lucy lost her tooth there, I joked to one of the women that we were celebrating a Lost Tooth. She made Lucy a button on the spot. When we first arrived at the Magic Kingdom, we took this photo:

Celebrate Today! And we did. We visited 3 theme parks, rode lots of rides [even ones some of us shouldn't have, Mom], saw the most fantastical nighttime light parade [my favorite part] and more than one 4th-of-July-in-April fireworks show. Sleeping in connecting hotel rooms was almost like a slumber party.

But you know – here comes my super-blogger insight — meaningful experiences are often joyful and sad. Karl and I went to a wedding this summer — a super-hip, world-is-our-oyster wedding with paper birds hung from the ceiling and a flower girl in cowboy boots and flower arrangements created on the fly by all the guests — and as the pastor exhorted the couple on the gravity of what they were doing, I leaned over to Karl and said “why bother? there is no way they can possibly grasp what he is saying right now.” But the people in the congregation who had 10 or 20 years under their belts could. I did. Dude, marriage is serious shit. Here’s another example of that joyful and sad thing: being pregnant. I was purely happy to be pregnant with Ben. It was as if I was gestating a permanent fetus, a forever baby. But that first night I brought him home, I sat in the darkened nursery and wondered what the hell I had been thinking. This wasn’t birthday-party happy. This was scary, scary, serious, profound, cosmic. Happy/sad. Wild joy/utter terror.

So taking that trip with my kids and my parents was both joyful and sad. My parents provided the expected talisman against travel disaster and family crankiness. Their presence enriched our experience. Watching my kids run around Tom Sawyer Island, shooting the same air guns in the fortress that Andrew and I shot more than 30 years ago while my parents looked on was a delight and a trip. But it also reminded me that time moves on. Here I was, making hotel reservations, planning each day, managing assorted suitcases of kids’ clothes, supervising kids in a pool, and gauging energy levels and impending needs for meals for all. Weren’t my parents just doing all that for me? Mom and Dad were valiant on this trip, up for everything — every ride, every experience, every whim. But I could see it cost them. My dad didn’t say no when I handed him a couple of ibuprofen. My mother didn’t deny that yes, she was hobbling after walking for 6 hours. They are –and I am– so much older than when we were last there as a family, me in my Holly Hobby overalls.

Every day, as a friend reminds me, we are all dying. Some of us pretend we’re not, but we’re all spending our days, conscious or not. A bride at the altar or a mother thick with child are both already on the journey of marriage or motherhood, even if all they’re thinking about is a wedding or a birth. They’re in it. We’re in it. No, maybe not what Walt Disney had in mind as they exhorted us to “Celebrate!” [can you imagine the button for that one? “I’m celebrating the Passage of Time!”]. And I may have undermined any chance of your accepting an invitation to join us on a future vacation [“Morticia Goes To the Grand Canyon!” “River-Cruising Scandinavia with the Grim Reaper!”]. But there it is. And I’m trying to celebrate it, in a cosmic, life-affirming way. I think I subconsciously knew I would experience our trip in that way. When I wrote a note to the kids’ teachers to explain their upcoming absence, I said something about the unique opportunity to take a trip with the kids’ grandparents who are still alive and healthy and what a blessing that was. At the time, I thought I was laying it on a little thick to assuage my anxiety about taking the kids out of school, but that is exactly what it was — a blessing. I am celebrating that.

I feel like I should apologize for the seriousness of that reflection. On a lighter note, here is an exchange I had with Lucy a few weeks ago. We were looking at a little weeble-wobbly thing that I had bought in sheer admiration of its design.

Lucia: I wonder why that stays up if it’s made of two spheres.
Mom: I don’t know.
Lucia: I wish you and Dad were scientists.
Mom: Yeah, well, that’s not going to happen.
Lucia: Yes, because Disney is the only place wishes come true!

Happy Valentine’s Day.  We’re celebrating early because tomorrow church starts at 8:30am and, no offense, but that is a serious downer.  I channeled my mother and set the table beautifully with darling cards at each place and tiny boxes of chocolate for each.  Then I struck out on my own by not making a breakfast of pancakes and sausages and fresh fruit and instead served a slab of cinnamon rolls from the bakery.  I can only take this so far.  It’s been a lovely morning.

It hasn’t all been commercial expressions of corporate-manipulated materialism.  Yesterday, Ben made a real sacrifice in the name of love.  Locks of Love.  That’s right, the Hair is gone.  Cut off at school yesterday so that some kid could have hair too.

We mentioned this possibility to Ben many months ago and he enthusiastically agreed to do it.  In the intervening time, he changed his mind but we’ve held him to it.  It wasn’t just that he never brushed it — ever — or that I had to wash it — yes, wash my 9-year old son’s hair — but that it seemed to have become a disguise, an odd security blanket, a curtain of hair that he hid behind. Granted, it was a glorious curtain, yellow blonde and silky, absolutely shiny and Cinderella once a week, but the rest of the week, a real squirrel’s nest.  Karl and I told Ben that he was welcome to grow it back and perhaps by then he’d be able to care for it properly, but for now, off with your head!  I mean your hair.

An Oakdale mom — Mimi, who has the raven, laquered, luxurious hair of a queen and seems able to grow headfuls by the year — organizes a Locks of Love event at school every year.  Another Oakdale mom and the Awesome Tammy Otte, playground supervisor, do the haircuts and kids get to leave class and have their hair cut at school — a mini drama that all the kids love.

Ben brought his friend Helen to the copy room/hair salon and Tammy started with a prayer, thanking God for every good gift, even the gift of our hair, which so many of us take for granted, like blood that replenishes every day or skin that regenerates and heals without a thought from us.  We prayed for kids who do think about their hair, because they’ve lost it.  We prayed for the wig makers who would take the gift of our kids and bless other kids.  I gripped Ben’s hand much harder than he liked.  Then Mimi’s daughter Naomi, similarly endowed with the hair of fairytale royalty, and Ben climbed up on stools and got haircuts.

A small crowd of teachers and miscellaneous kids gathered in the copy room, Ben’s classmates, struck with sudden, urgent needs to use the bathroom, peeked in the door.  And the Amazing Tammy gave Ben the best haircut he ever had in his life.

When it was over, Ben ran to the bathroom to take a look.  I waited at the top of the stairs by his classroom door and I will never forget the sight of my son at the bottom of the stairs, whispering up to me urgently, “I look horrible.”  Oh, Lord, my heart sank.  And then, Ben’s class swarmed out for recess and came tumbling down those stairs, surrounding him and exclaiming “wow!  it looks great!”  “holy cow, Ben!  awesome!”  One girl, who now has a special place in my heart forever and may take my son to the prom, said “I think you look good both ways, Ben!”  And suddenly, Ben looked gigantic.  His arms slid off his head, where they had been wrapped, and he started to take in the compliments and I swear he almost started to swagger.  His teacher joined the crowd and started to applaud and all the kids joined her.  Can you hear the music swelling?  The after-school special is almost over.

Karl and I spent the evening staring at Ben.  He did look huge.  Like a fifth grader.  He seemed to be standing taller.  And he was incredibly animated.  His face was shiny.  His face was visible.  And it was heartbreakingly like the face of my baby boy from so many years ago. He is still actually quite lovely.  One of his classmates did say “you still look like a girl!” and I suppressed the urge to cuff him because it’s actually true.  Long, dark, swoopy lashes and red, beestung lips and the palest most lovely skin.  He’s gorgeous.  But he looks like a boy, a boy who keep his word, and did a good deed and grew a lot in one day.

It took me a minute to figure out what was going on.  Ben, Lucy, and Zoe were in the den playing — took me a minute to realize it was a game of charades.  I present to you Overheard In The Den This Evening:

Lucy:  “Someone on a toilet?”
Lucy:  “Oprah on a toilet?!”
Zoe:  “NO!!”
Lucy:  “Auntie Tash?”  [Auntie Tash is Zoe's mom]
Zoe:  “Yes!”