I sent this letter out as a contribution to a postcard swap I do with other platoon moms on a military support site...I haven't had time to post but, I thought it would be fun to put it here too, it was addressd to any service member as we are copying twenty and sending them to a central site where someone sorts and we wind up with 20 different ones to send on to our guys...pretty cool huh? I wonder who thought of that...

JMJ


This is a letter about vacations…It should have some pictures and cool anecdotes, but well I don’t have any we are moving and everything is packed up sooo…. Instead I have some family stories that make us laugh Jack and Seven through our noses, if the teller tells it right. You probably did have to be there, but here goes anyway…

Let me preface this: Vacation is a tough one for me. I find myself wanting to be sarcastic about what the word must really translate to…I mean who are we kidding? Sure, sure lots of people have perfectly respectable, little umbrella in the glass of pink whatever kind of experiences…I can dig it. But we didn’t. I still don’t. Bitter? NO. Sooner or later I will get that great vacation…..lol…but now I realize what all those vacations--unreasonable facsimilies thereof, were for…they were so that I could maybe give someone else a little chuckle—maybe??? dunno….blessedly, I have no pictures for the following descriptions.

Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Grand Canyon Car trip aka God Help Us All….

In summer prior to my sophomore year of highschool, Pop thinks we all need to go out to Grand Canyon. So he packs like an OCD camper on crack for the foray. We take our workout routines, Coach Leonard* gives us for Cross Country and we are off.

* oh that man---think Former Marine, Bantee rooster, run til you puke. “PT! PT! PT! PT! Good for you ! Good for you! Good for me! Good for me!” Get the picture???…okay more on that later…

Anyway-- we have successfully kept my middle sister off beans and pickles for the last 48 hours, prayed that the sing alongs will be brief or altogether forgotten, get into a baby crap yellow station wagon and hit I 10. We make it to Ft. Stockton, Texas. What you may ask is relevant about Ft. Stockton? Nothing really. Think South Central Texas. A place that can’t make up it’s mind whether it is the hill country, desert or the end of the Rockies…

So we get to camp site…unpack the car that looks like we are a family of gypies about to set up a market any minute and get ready to strike camp.

Pop does his Great Santini bit marshaling the troops, barking orders and cussing the BBQ pit fire that the wind keeps trying to blow out.---which of course is the first tip off…The second is this pure cowboy type man, skin weathered to leather, climbing out of a pickup/camper in the slip next ours and tipping his hat as he walks around to sit on his back bumper with his hands shoved in his bluejean jacket pockets with squinty eyes on the horizon and of course, on the crazy family parked next to him…

Papa in the meantime is still barking and trying to beat the sunset so isn’t really paying attention to the wind picking up and the clouds moving in fast and low over the middle of nowhere or to any of us who are also mentioning said clouds. “Umm Pop, I think it’s gonna…” “ Don’t think.” “No one asked you to think.” “Okaaaaaaaaaaaay.”

The man on the bumper smiles at us and my pop mutters something under his breath about why the idiot next to us isn’t setting up. Pretty soon and just short of him breaking out the cattle prod, we get the tent up and are looking for rocks to hold the paper plates down—another really bad sign.

Papa is pretty pleased with himself and is about to sit down when we feel the first drop. And then the second. And then a plate goes flying and another thereafter. Not because a central Texas thunderstorm is coming through, nooooooooooo, but because we, the pogues, had failed to find a big enough rock to hold them down. Amidst his diatribe on the laws of physics, we hear a snap and watch a tent pole javelin itself across the park and before he can ascertain whose tent setting up skills require remediation, the whole rest of the tent turns into a sail worthy of the World Cup which also flies across the park, followed closely by the rest of the plates, dinner cups and various condiments.

Pop is hot. My sisters and I are laughing our asses off which further adds to his consternation and absolute belief we somehow orchestrated a weather system just to tick him off. Amidst the melee we notice the guy who had been sitting on the back of his pickup truck, who was watching all the entertainment, is now sitting in his cab enjoying the show---dry.

Mom, miraculously, dissuades Pop from ordering an offspring-led picnic item recon across the park and we all head to the showers. When we come back, we pile into the car that Papa has thrown everything into in a very un-The Great Santini way I might add---and as we pull out of the park, the sky has cleared to this dusky magenta and the old cowboy has his fire started, a thermos of coffee lazing in his lap and from the chair and cooler footrest now set up near the back door of his camper, he smiles and waves us goodbye.

I think we wound up at a rest stop somewhere between there and Van Horn.

We ate cereal out of a box that night and learn the next morning that it takes exactly 3 hours and 18 minutes for a Chevy upholstery insignia to wear off your face.

Would that hell could freeze over…

I think this was a couple of years later…I had a grandma who’s driveway did not go to the street…heck her driveway was not even paved, but I digress…so The Great Santini is at it again…we are all headed to the Colorado for some time in the mountains …Pop is up bright and early and decides for this 10 day camping trip we need three changes of clothes. What? “Nope,nope, nope. Everyone needs to repack.”---our translation…take anything that suggests you have a scintilla of geographical sense out of your bag.

Ummm, but we are going to be in the M-O-U-N-T-A-I-N-S. We learned about altitude when we went to the Grand Canyon and tried to run Coach Leonard’s freaking blueprint o’ suicide road work. Can you say sea level training elevation vs. Rocky freaking Mountain training elevation?---yuh- neither could we…we couldn’t speak for the lack of oxygen. Pop liked to drop us off during the day trips and pace us with the car…elevation took on a deeper meaning after Grand Canyon…it would have served us well in freaking Colorado had it been allowed to!!

But the Great Santini spoke and so while I compliantly repacked with my younger sister, my middle sister who would be blowing off her appointment to West Point in a few years to enlist in the Airforce, decided that she might have to rethink that directive, you know---for practice.

So there we are in the woods, Grandma is sitting in the stationwagon waiting for Sasquatch and we are all sitting around a campfire freezing our asses off. Papa is saying all we need to do is get moving a bit and things will warm up and pretty soon like a bunch of flatlanders, smoking the crack we must have saved from the last cartrip, we start jumping around trying to get warm…Quietly, Amy, said family rebel, goes to the car and explains that Sasquatch isn’t due for another hour or two so grandma will open the car door. She pulls out her sweatsuit and looked at Pop about to blow an eyeball from an ensuing apoplectic seizure and with an absolutely flat face and said, "You said to repack our bag so I did. I packed the rest of my stuff under the seat…” Sometimes, I look back on her whole adolescence and am amazed she made it to adulthood.

Present day…
I go places, but I would never call them vacations…Mothers can’t call them vacations. Some don’t even call themselves mothers when they are on vacation…I prefer cruise director. It’a fancy way to say customer service agent--brutalized customer service agent. You sit in a car with the kiddos and the dh who drives while you settle fights, monitor for barf face, dive for toys that mysteriously disappear into places a grown man wouldn’t put his hand into---that is, between the seat cushions of any vehicle that transports children on a regular basis. You also are charged with screening on a moment by moment basis whether said kid really has to pee or is just bored and determining who is touching/looking at who and deciding where we are stopping to eat and offering general, unsolicited navigational advice that begins with, “Well, Honey, maybe we should stop and ask…”

I don’t mind venturing out with the kids, I just don’t delude myself and call it a vacation…a reunion, a trip, a journey…fine. a vacation is where you pack for leisure--not for an evacuation.

Right now my trips to airports include leaving the house with my mommy kit full of vials of boo boo cream, first aid stuff and a Swiss army knife. Which of course, I forget I even have in my huge bag because I have four kids who regularly need that kind of stuff…when I don’t remember--- some airport guy, who looks at shoes all day is finally rewarded with some action. He visibly has to refrain from Barney Fifing his pants, sniffing and gets to ask me “Ma’am would there be any reason for carrying a knife in your bag”? “Ummm... Noooo,” I say--- a little distracted by the 3 year old trying to xray himself on the belt…Barney then looks at me like he asked me if I had been having Cheetos and I had just blown said Cheeto dust on him while denying the very idea… Then I look at husband, who I swear is pointing at me sideways with his head and talking to the guy with his eyes all big and his teeth clenched like he has never seen me before IN HIS LIFE. Hand smack to forehead….”Oh yeahhhhhhhhhhh," I say, “…that knife—you know as opposed to the machete I have in the diaper bag…well why didn’t you say so? You know... it also has a handy nail file, corkscrew, toothpick, scissor and mini saw…it's pink for goodness sake." Barney is umbemused.“Yes, yes of course you have to confiscate it…now what about this machete?”

Tony and I get on the plane and realize things would have been really bad, if we hadn’t thought to shake down the the kids’ bags before we left…Jake had like 9 foot of bike chain (a ten year old mind is not something I will be exploring at this moment:::shudder) that he had carried up on the train to Chicago …knife and chain??? Ack.….we would have all been on the 10 oclock news that night…

So for now we just love playing with our kids and going to the beach and having friends over for get togethers and parties…we make a mean Margarita…we just don’t make plans for vacations…Ya’ll take care of yourselves and each other. We keep you in constant thought and prayer and hope your boots are on US soil, soon. If anyone deserves a real vacation, it is you.

Traveling mercies, my friends.
Traveling mercies.

Hope S. in Texas.