Tuesday, August 9, 2011

SUMMER VACATION ON THE CHEAP

You know, like I said.  Summer.  HOT.  Hard to write.  Even with one less kid around.  (What's my excuse?  A viscous stomach bug, lasting five full days.  Mad Men season three.)

Jack spent last week with Nammaw and Gramps in Paladuro, Texas (yeah, I don't really know where that is either).  They saw a part Texas History/part techno show with "special effects, mom!", swam everyday in the motel pool Jack chose specifically because well, it had a pool (Best Western plug here), rode horses on what was supposedly the easy trail but raised my poor mother's blood pressure (their horses were named Jethro, Tonto, and Festus; can you literally think of anything better?  In the nightly phone call, Jack reported he chose Tonto but switched to Jethro at the last minute, a fateful decision because out on the actual trail, Jethro was "nice" and "fun" and "galloped" up the hill, causing Jack to scream with laughter, but Tonto was "beautiful but stubborn".  You know what they say.  An animal is supposed to project his master's personality.  So of course my mother was atop Tonto, who enjoyed stopping and standing randomly no matter what Nammaw did, until the guide had to come and drag them.  This image gives me no end to pleasure.  Am I just pure evil?), and ate dinner twice at a joint named "Buffalo's" where Jack insists he had rattlesnake tacos.  (God how I adore a good parentheses.)

We didn't go on an official family vacation this year.  My stepson Zachary just got back from Michigan, where he resided for seven weeks, at debate camp, which yes, he went to voluntarily (is it weird the things there are camps for now?  debate camp, chess camp, cooking camp, study skills camp, belly button picking camp; my summers were spent riding my bike back and forth between friends' houses, leaving at nine and returning at five, as if I was working a full-time job).  My husband and Isabel and I are hung out together all week. "Da da" arrived home, we had dinner and gave Izzy her bath, all the while showering her with exclusive attention, which the girl clearly revels in (she is her mother's daughter, already flirting coquettishly with older men, performing with myriad voices).  Even though we were alternately sick, it reminded me of what it was like when Jack was little and I only had one kid at home to focus on and then that made me wonder why I ever thought that was so hard.   What was he doing?  Like smiling, gurgling, rolling around on the floor, eating occasionally?  It seemed so earth shattering at the time.

Last week was my first real consistent time alone with my daughter since I brought her home from the hospital.  I feel like we've gotten to know each other better.  Yep, she really does like to talk excessively, bite things fiercely, turn her head to the side and raise her eyebrows because she knows the coos of affection she will elicit.  And me?  Well, I'm the same mom now as I was to Jack, but also some other lady who doesn't freak out over diaper rash.  The same mommy who consistently forgets key items in the diaper bag, like say, diapers (I actually fashioned a diaper out of an enormous maxi-pad once when Jack was 8 weeks old, with the aid of this very hospitable guy in the baby chiropractor's office.  baby chiropractor's office? need I say more?) only now it's not such a crisis.

Remember you were a kid and a summer took forever?  Yes, I know, a logical mathematical friend suggested to me this is not so strange, because it's relative.  The less years you have, the longer everything seems.  Then my friend smiled and said, "You're forty." But go with me a second, no matter how embarrassing your clothes were.  Remember how you wanted to go back to school by the time you got there? Maybe you whined and kicked, but you secretly coveted your crisp new clothes that weren't too short or too stained yet, craved your Hello Kitty or SuperMan lunchbox, missed your friends with fresh haircuts and crooked teeth growing in, your different teacher who was of course taller/shorter/fatter/slimmer/nicer/meaner/younger/older and had new golden rules that you had to learn and live by.  The same just waxed floors, same cafeteria and principal, reminding you who you were, who you were growing into, how you had changed and how you had stayed the same.  It was comforting, wasn't it? 

I felt the last fews days I was in some past home movie, watching myself go through the paces I have been before--that fantastic montage of those years that everyone tells you--strangers tell you--will go too fast, in a blink, over before you know it. And you smile and nod, clutching your baby who just had a blowout, or spilled her cup of milk into the crevices of her carseat.  And you try to be Eckhart Tolle about it and focus on the Power of Now.  But you have to make dinner.  And you're out of milk, eggs, fabric softener and toilet paper. Meanwhile, my sixteen-year-old stepson is taller than my husband, definitely more mature than I am, beginning to live a life we are less a part of.  And that's the way it should be.  But the thing is, we were just getting married, he was just six, I just saw him, because I am not this old.  That's my parents.  

Jack returned late Sunday night, thankfully without Jethro in tow, and alas, in a few short weeks, second grade will begin.  We will stop broiling from the inside out, and eventually be cold enough in the fall to forget how sweaty we are now.  It just keeps spinning regardless, proving what is just today will later be some memory from a vantage point we can't imagine.  This makes me feel big and small.  I want to freeze everything, encapsulate my children in a way that Shutterfly or Snapfish cannot contain.  Time keeps giving me the finger.

I'm glad we didn't go on a big family vacation with plane trips and magnetic tic tac toe boards and hotels and restaurants.  It was nice kicking it old school.  Staying at home for awhile.  I keep convincing myself I will remember forever.  That somehow that would be enough.