There was nowhere to pull over but I was starting to fear for the safety of my mother. I glanced in the rearview mirror every couple of seconds. I could see Erin hanging on to her blanket for dear life. In the front with me, Paul stroked his mustache from the middle outward twice per second. His head turned front to back, front to back, as he struggled to watch both the road and the unraveling girls. After I asked him to get in the back, he crawled over the seats and changed places with Grandma.
“Whew,” Grandma said as she burrowed into the front seat. “That was something.”
It had been over an hour since we went through the entrance to the park. According to the map, we weren’t even halfway there. I had a nagging thought that we had ten more days on our trip. As much as I tried to push the thought out of my mind, it kept coming back like the perfect boomerang.
Ten more days. Ten more days.
The fighting continued in the back. I was concentrating so hard on driving that I could tune most of it out.
Paul and I had discussed what we would do about fighting in the van before we left St. Paul. We thought we could handle any fighting that came up by not allowing the child to swim for a half hour when we got to the hotel. I had read about it in a book about parenting and it sounded logical. We told the girls at the beginning of the trip that this would be our punishment for fighting.
We had a different problem now. The places we were staying in for the next five nights didn’t have pools. I knew that saying, “Six nights from now you will have to wait a half hour to swim,” would not have the calming effect I wanted.
Paul tried to interest Anne and Clare in cards, road games (count the campers), but their hearts weren’t in it. They had both found their niche and there was no turning back.
“She bugs me so much!”
I couldn’t determine which of the two said it. Their voices had sort of melded together in their shrillness.
The middle of a thunderstorm could not have been more electric.
“Would you two stop?” Paul pleaded.
“I hate her.”
“The driving is terrible, girls.” One last appeal.
“I hate her, too.”
“Nobody hates anyone,” I said. I couldn’t tune the word hate out. I was going to add that I had never hated anyone when I was interrupted by Anne.
“How do you know?” Anne asked. “I do too hate her.”
“No, you don’t. She’s your sister.” The quagmire of our children’s fighting was pulling me under.
“SO,” Anne and Clare stated passionately.
“Ignore them,” Grandma “whispered.”
“Easier said than done,” I said.
“If you don’t quit fighting, I’m going to spank both of you,” Paul finally said in a voice as clipped as his mustache.
My mouth opened and then shut tightly.
There was a hushed silence that settled over the van. This had not been part of our original consequences.
We limped into The Old Faithful Inn two and a half hours after entering the park. We were all numb: from sitting, from fighting, from family togetherness. Grandma scurried off for a quick walk. The rest of us trudged inside.
As we opened the door, I exclaimed out loud. It was more like entering a cathedral than a hotel. The wide open center of the century old inn was about five or six stories high. All the supporting structures and beams were of exposed wood. Some beams were entire tree trunks with the bark and branches removed. The openness gave me a sense of freedom, while the warmth of the wood drew me in, welcoming. Interesting-looking shops were located all around the main floor.
We registered at the front desk and brought our luggage to a double room on the third floor. Everything about it was spare and simple. I thought it was perfect. The girls noticed that there wasn’t any bathroom in the room. It was down the hall. I assured them that I would be outside the door as a lookout when they showered.
“Mom, Old Faithful is interrupting,” Anne said. I quickly went out to the veranda and watched. Old Faithful was about 200 yards away from the Inn. We had a perfect view of the famous geyser as it erupted. Hot water and steam spewed high into the air.
“It’s wonderful,” I said.
“I’m going to watch it interrupt every hour,” Anne said.
“Me too,” Clare said.
After the sun went down, the girls put on their pajamas.
Paul, Grandma, and I were drawn to the wooden deck that encircled the entire third floor. Each of the three floor levels had a deck surrounding it. Wooden tables and chairs were scattered throughout. Groups of people sat at the tables drinking, chatting, and looking out at the heart of the Inn.
A piano player sat down at the grand piano on the second floor level. Soon he was playing songs from Broadway musicals. We sat down at one of the tables to watch and listen.
When the girls heard the music, the three of them came out of the room. They knew most of the songs from our tapes at home. Anne and Clare sat at the table while Erin crawled up on my lap with her blanket. It covered every part of her frail body except her head.
“Do you like it here?” I asked.
“Mm, hmm,” Erin said as she snuggled in closer.
A man stood up next to the piano. He began to sing. He had no microphone but he didn’t need it for his glorious voice filled every square inch of the huge building. People stopped talking, spellbound. He sang one song after another. We heard the piano play the introduction to “Edelweiss.”
“He’s going to sing your favorite, Erin,” I said.
She already had the dreamy look in her eyes that she always got when she heard “Edelweiss.”She put her head on my shoulder and I held her tighter. The song carried us away.
I knew if I lived to be a hundred, and traveled the world over, it would never get better than this.
The next day the girls showered with me as “the lookout.” After everyone had finished washing and drying hair, getting dressed, and eating breakfast, we went outside.
The area around Old Faithful had a long boardwalk. A walkway went between the myriad of other geysers and water-filled hot springs. The colors of the water were every shade of blue and blue-green; from aqua, to teal, to the deeper blues. We walked at a leisurely pace because the girls didn’t want to miss any geysers. One they all liked was a little bit of water percolating under a couple of pebbles. Erin discovered it after the rest of us had walked by.
“Mom, I found a baby,” Erin tweeted.
“Isn’t that cute? Look girls.”
We wondered if it would get as big as Old Faithful.
In the afternoon we drove to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone and a place called the Paint Pots. My mother stayed with Erin so they could rest. The Grand Canyon was a deep gorge filled with waterfalls and rushing water. I didn’t expect it to be so large and so “grandî. The sound and the power of the waterfalls mesmerized me. We drove around to see different views of the canyon. We were wishing—as we had in The Black Hills—that we had a full week to spend in Yellowstone.
Our next stop was the Paint Pots, mud ponds that boiled and bubbled from the heat underneath. A sulfuric smell saturated the air.
“It smells like eggs,” Clare said, plugging her nose.
“Yeah, rotten ones,” Anne said, sniffing the air.
There were other geysers too; one had been erupting continuously for decades.
For Anne, no other geyser could compare with Old Faithful’s “interrupting.”
“I love Old Faithful the best,” Anne said.
“Why don’t you marry it then?” Clare asked. This was Clare’s response anytime the word love was used. I was getting “married” several times a day. I loved everything!
We saw elk, buffalo, mountain goats, and other animals. What an unusual place! We returned to the Inn bubbling with things to tell Grandma and Erin.
I’m not much of a shopper but each of the shops I mentioned earlier was owned by an artist. As we walked from shop t
o shop, the artists painted, sculpted, and threw pottery. One man burned beautiful designs into leather. I could have spent an entire day watching them.
“Why don’t you and Paul get away for dinner?” Grandma asked, after we’d strolled through the shops.
“What will you and the girls have?”
“We’ll find something. Don’t worry.”
Paul and I ate at the restaurant downstairs. It was a welcome break. When we returned to the room, no one was there. We looked out on the veranda and there they sat.
“What are you guys doing?” I asked.
“Watching Old Faithful.”
We sat outside until the sun went down. The moon and stars took over the darkness. As we had traveled further west, the stars had become brighter and more plentiful. We had tried to look at the stars every night to find the different constellations. The Big Dipper was always easy and the first to become visible. The girls had learned how to find the Little Dipper and the North Star.
“There’s the belt,” Anne announced, pointing to the three consecutive stars that comprised Orion’s belt.
I wished I had a book about the different constellations. Although we didn’t know all the names and which stars belonged to which constellations, it was delightful to sit, necks stretched upward, under the flickering canopy.
We spent most of the next day in Yellowstone. We didn’t want to leave. Our family feeling had returned with the charm of our surroundings. We had only 90 miles to go to the Grand Tetons.
Four
Grandfather to the Rescue
When the going gets tough, listen to the voices of experience.
It didn’t take us long to realize that the wonderful family feeling was nothing more than an illusion. Anne and Clare began picking at each other within the first five miles as we drove towards the Tetons. After an hour, my nerves were as frayed as my husband’s.
“We were too ambitious,” I said to Paul. I couldn’t tell if it was my lip or my right eyelid beginning to twitch.
“Yes, we were. The trip is too long.”
“I’m not talking about the trip. I’m talking about them.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean we had three in a row. What were we thinking?”
“We weren’t thinking. That was the problem.” Paul smiled through HIS twitch, and patted my leg.
We heard a scream from the back. To describe it as bloodcurdling would not do it justice. It went right through my eardrums and hung there, convulsing. The little bones in my ears oscillated together so fast they didn’t know what to do. The scream rang and resounded over and over again in my middle ear.
Paul pulled over.
I moved to the back even though it was the last place I wanted to be. We moved Anne to the front.
“She’s turning around,” Clare said. Clare’s eyes had an eerie attraction for Anne’s.
Anne turned, stuck out her tongue at Clare, and smiled. The magnetism went both ways.
Clare was gearing up for another primal shriek. My ears and twitches simply could not take it. I didn’t want to lose it completely in front of my mother and yell SHUTUP at the top of my lungs. I had to act now.
“Don’t even think about screaming again,” I said. I had my arm around Erin. Her mouth was moving rapidly up and down in harmony with her clutched blanket.
I don’t know why Clare stopped, but she did.
Nagging thoughts began crowding my mind until all I could think about was Home Sweet Home.
We stopped at a lake so we could stretch. I walked down to the water, as much to get away as to look for flat rocks for skipping. My “shadow” followed me and asked what I was doing.
“Look for the flat rocks, Erin,” I said. “They’re the best for skipping.”
“Like this?” Erin held up a rock as big as her hand.
“More like this,” I said, showing her my half-dollar sized rock. “Watch.” I put the rock between my index finger and thumb. I snapped my wrist and the rock skipped three or four times.
Erin jumped up and down. She got busy looking for rocks for me.
Anne and Clare had been watching in a disinterested way. Now they both ran over.
“How’d you do that?” Anne asked. “Will you show me?”
“Sure.”
“Show me, too,” Clare said.
They got busy finding flat rocks. We worked on technique and snapping the wrist with the rock in our hand first. Then, we went down to the water to try it. I brought my arm to the side of my body and let the rock soar. It hit the surface perfectly and skipped eight times.
“Wow,” Anne and Clare said together.
“I want to do that,” Anne said.
“Me too,” Clare said.
“Mom, I got a weal . . . weal . . . big . . . one.” Erin paused with each word because the effort of lifting the real, real big rocks made her pant. She stood next to the water, heaved them with all her strength, and if they made it to the lake, they splashed. Then she did a little dance and went to find another.
I sat down on a log to watch and offer advice. Paul and Grandma had stayed by the van but now they came over to watch the excitement.
“Mom, are these good ones?” Anne showed me her rocks.
“They’re fine. Remember to snap your wrist.”
Clare threw one rock after another into the water. One of them skipped twice. She turned around to see if I was watching.
I was. I clapped for her. In no time, Anne was successful too, and we all clapped.
“I got a weal . . . big . . . wock,” Erin squeaked. Her voice had gone into an octave that I wouldn’t have believed was possible for the human ear to hear. I covered my ears and thanked God I wasn’t a dog.
When we returned to the van, the talk was all about rock skipping.
“Mom, how’d you do that so many times?” Anne asked.
“I’d like to say I was just lucky, but I know it was skill.” I rubbed my chest with my fist. In fact, it was my first time skipping eight times, but they didn’t have to know that.
“How old were you when you learned?”
“I think I was six.”
“Where’d you learn?” Clare asked.
“The Mississippi River. There was a beach by our house that we used to walk to.”
“You’re good at it,” Clare said.
We arrived at our cabin on Colter Bay a half hour later. Erin took a nap and the rest of us read our books.
In the evening, we drove to a place that had hay wagons pulled by horses. All the way to the ranch, the talk in the car was about skipping rocks. What a simple thing that was to change the course of the conversation!
We stood waiting for our turn to get on the wagon. I thought we should go over to look at the horses in the corral.
“That’s a boy horse, right?” Anne said. She pointed at a large stallion.
I didn’t quite know what to say since there were a lot of people around. I didn’t want to discuss male anatomy with my six-year-old so I didn’t say anything. It was the coward’s way out.
Anne wasn’t going to let it go that easily. She looked back at the stallion. “All you have to do is look at their seat and you know if it’s a boy,” she announced.
Clare and Erin were becoming really interested in Anne’s knowledge of boys.
“Let me see,” Clare said.
“Me too,” Erin said.
“Isn’t that right, Dad?” Anne asked. “You just look at their seat.”
“I guess so,” Paul said. He moved them away from the corral. “Let’s go wait for the wagon.”
After an enjoyable ride in the hay wagon, we drove the short distance back to Colter Bay. The discussions in the van quickly soured as the disagreements between our two oldest turned ugly.
“Shutup, Clare,” Anne snarled.
“She told me to shutup,” Clare squealed.
“Anne, we don’t talk like that.” I gave our firstborn a pleading gaze.
The tw
o of them were just getting revved up by the time we parked next to the cabin. Paul, Grandma, and I emerged from the van, picked up Erin, and stepped inside. We hadn’t said a word to Anne and Clare. They realized the audience was gone in a couple of minutes and rejoined the four of us.
Anne and Clare’s lack of inhibition now carried over to the restaurants when we ate. Either Paul or I sat between them, trying to referee. The arbitrating didn’t work, however, as they traded barbs across our worn-out torsos. The girl’s hostility towards each other was present in our Scrabble and card games at night. There was no escaping.
That night we asked Grandma if she would like to fly home and we would pay for it. She could leave from Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The rest of us would have to forego the time we planned in Colorado and hightail it home. With two girls battling the whole 1,200 miles, I was sure. It sounded dreadful but our options had narrowed.
“Mary Ann, do you want to fly home?” Paul asked Grandma.
“No, I’ll stick it out,” Grandma said.
“How would you feel about skipping Colorado?”
“Whatever you want.”
“If you change your mind, let us know. We’ll work it out.”
“Thank you but I won’t change my mind.”
It was Sunday morning and Grandma wanted to go to church. We had read about an outdoor ecumenical service held every Sunday at 8:00 a.m. Grandma and I decided to go. We sat down on one of the folding chairs and faced the simple table serving as the altar. The temperature was about 60 degrees, and the air was crisp and clear. I filled my lungs to capacity.
The serrated peaks of the Tetons formed the forefront as we listened to the readings from Genesis. Not even a wisp of cloud interrupted the blue expanse above the mountains. The dark sapphire of the sky was a color I had never seen before. The words of the readings took on new meanings as we gazed at creation.
As we walked back to the van, we heard a man singing “How Great Thou Art.” He had his arm around his son and his voice was as pure as our surroundings. It was truly a spiritual moment.
The adults in the family wanted to go into the town of Jackson Hole but we were afraid to get in the van with Anne and Clare. After vacillating for a while, we chose to brave the van ride. True to form, we had barely adjusted the mirrors when they started.
Warning!: Family Vacations May Be Hazardous to Your Health Page 3
