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Family Daze
Vacation is a relative term when it involves a family
By Debbie Farmer
It's Monday morning and I'm sitting in a car staring at a red light and breathing deeply in a Zen sort of way.
Oh, it's not because I'm impatient or anything like that. Rather, it's because I'm on a family vacation. You see, this summer, instead of taking one big vacation, I've decided to forgo the hassle of an airplane ride and take the children on several day trips in the car. Now this isn't as crazy an idea as you might think, especially since we live in a state where you can drive for an hour and be at the ocean or in the mountains or in the desert, and feel as if you've gone someplace new.
This, however, does bring up a new set of problems, one of which is that, in a family of four, everyone's idea of "vacation" is different. For instance, my husband's idea of fun is pitching a tent alone in the wilderness. My children look for places with fries and an outdoor play area. And I prefer a luxury hotel with good room service. But, hey, no one asks me.
The other problem with taking day trips is that you need to know several critical things before you go. Like the exact location of all the good bathrooms and the estimated distance between them. Of course, this is vital information for obvious reasons. But you also need to know the location of places that you should avoid at any cost. This includes any facility that gives out free plastic toys, skeeball prizes or chewing gum.
Another thing I've learned is to allow plenty of time (five days) to drive to wherever it is that you're going. No matter how well you plan, all kinds of minor emergencies will arise to throw you off schedule. Like, for instance, the sudden onset of cabin fever. This is when you have to stop the car and get out right this very minute because you've been trapped in the same vehicle with two children under 8 years old for more than 40 minutes in a row. And, mind you, not just any children--ones under the influence of sing-alongs, and clearly over the legal limit of fishy crackers.
And then, of course, there are scenic distractions: a shoe on the side of the road, a flattened squirrel, an interesting tree, or any other enticing roadside attraction where your children will insist you pull over so you all can take a closer look.
And it's not just me. Recently my friend Julie's family left at 9 a.m. for a day at the beach and arrived in time to see the sun setting over the horizon. And she has no idea how this happened because, like most people who experience extreme traumatic stress, she mentally blocked out all the hours spent traveling in the car with her family.
That said, I've found the reverse can also be true. Strangely enough, my only memory of our family's long-ago camping trip to Yosemite Valley is spending three days looking for a pacifier that had rolled somewhere underneath the front seat of the car. And, although I vaguely recollect somebody saying something about the Pacific Ocean and a bridge on our last trip into San Francisco, the only thing that clearly stands out in my mind is having to break up a fight over the last chocolate chip cookie on a moving cable car.
So here I am sitting in a car with my family, staring at a red light, and breathing deeply in a Zen sort of way. And to think that our day trip to the zoo is only a half dozen fights, two boxes of crackers, and 87 rounds of I-Spy away. But that's all right. Kids live for this kind of stuff.
Besides, who knows? With a little luck and persistence, maybe, just maybe, I'll even get to see an animal or two.
Debbie Farmer can be contacted at paradigmnews@familydaze.com.
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
