Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2001-06-22 - 8:54 a.m.

It Was The Best Of Times...

Did I use the word "recreation" and the word "children" in the same entry?

Slap me.

Slap me again - make it count this time.

I am writing this down so that I can remember, and if I don't remember, so that anyone who reads this can remind me; and if I ever write anything indicating I am going anywhere with my children for any length of time, please DO remind me, and if you can't do that, please call the local mental health facility and arrange to have me collected and brought in for aversion therapy:

Two Days Is All The Time My Children and I Can Stand with Each Other.

Yes, two days. Exactly two days and not one second more.

For two days I had charming children. Charming, joyful, adorable, this-is-why-I-did-this-in-the-first-place children. Helpful, cheerful, grateful children. And yes, they WERE mine, because I checked the labels.

They swam. They laughed. They ate. They helped schlep luggage, they admired the hotel room, they said everything was wonderful. I suppose if I had listened more carefully over the splashing and laughing, I would have heard the tick-tick of their two-day timers, but I didn't. I just thought that perhaps finally they were maturing, and they would be wonderful vacation partners for the foreseeable future, and we would take many relaxing joyful trips together ...

I KNOW; that's why I said, "Slap me."

Day three and the kids disintegrate. Slowly, but clearly, they begin acting out the gestures to the song, "I have not had enough sleep; I have eaten too much junk; I have had too much excitement; I am overloaded and YOU, Mama, are standing RIGHT UNDER MY DUMP TRUCK." The details are meaningless - typical kid stuff involving three young girls, hurt feelings, competition, jealousy, adolescent hormones, a good dose of the sulks. Mix in a bit of eye-rolling, a small bucket of tears, and a fifty pound sack of sucky attitude, and you have my children for the last two days.

But you're not getting the details here, because this isn't about my kids, it's about ME. Me, ME, damnit. The expensive water slides and the rental jet ski and the crappy coffee-shop dinner were all about them, and they were ungrateful, and that's ALL they're getting. They're not getting my essay too.

This is about me, and what it feels like to be me when my kids, like, royally fuck up on a vacation with OTHER people. So it's not just that I hate them, but I have all those inner demons saying, "You RAISED them wrong, THAT'S why they don't behave - you're a crappy parent and now you are ruining OTHER people's vacations, too, and YOUR kids are being much worse than HER kid." It doesn't matter that I have seen her kid be a total pinhead (and I loved every second of THAT, you better believe it) and that anyway she is my best friend and there is nothing about me, including my parenting skills and my children's typical behavior, that she doesn't already know and she STILL chooses to vacation with me; I still have those feelings.

I think she'd have to agree with the two-day thing.

So, two days. That's it. I could have used the extra two days for recovery and perhaps to - oh luxury - lie by the pool with my friend, and chat, which we did not get to do much, unless you count hurried private conferences held in the bathroom or on the balcony - "So what do you think? Do we withhold the miniature golf privilege or not?" - and I am not willing to count that. Two days with the kids, and then I will call their Dad and tell him that they will be standing out in front of the lobby waiting with their suitcases and a large Slurpee each, and I am going to spend the rest of my vacation still feeling like I have the greatest kids in the world, and maybe even MISSING them. "Gee, it sure is lonely around here without anyone asking for soda money. Do you need any soda money? Oh, and would you mind throwing your underpants on the bathroom floor?"

That's what I need to remember for the future. What I need to remember for this time was those first two days and how great they were. They really were. My best friend and I haven't traveled together in too long, but we still remember how. I am going to work on remembering things like the second night, when another friend came and took us all on his boat across the lake to have dinner. The warm night, the lights of the houses on shore, the joy on my children's faces as we sped over the water. The vacation part, the good part. Because when it IS good, it's very very good indeed. Like anything else, I just have to learn when to quit.

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