“You have to pick one.”
“Okay. John Glenn's capsule is it.”
“How come not something about Lincoln?” Paul asked.
“I don't know. I liked everything. And I really liked watching Colleen feed the birds.”
“Can I say I liked the elephant even though we saw it yesterday?” Erin asked.
“Sure.”
“Well, then, that's what I liked the best.”
To the sound of flipping channels in the other room, I drifted off dreaming of flags, blue diamonds, rotundas, and space capsules.
Twelve
Hair, Hips, and Other Shortcomings
Love yourself the way you are no matter what your children say
During the previous year, things had changed drastically for our oldest daughter. She had become a teenager and finished her first year in Junior High. The change from a small grade school to a huge Junior High had been an adjustment for all of us. In September, a couple weeks after we got home from Washington, D. C., Anne would turn 14 and start the eighth grade. If I had to choose one word to describe her, it would be Cool with a capital C.
According to Anne, everything we saw in D. C. was too hot, too boring, too much history, boring again, not interesting, definitely not cool. The Hope Diamond got a “It isn't THAT great.” The Spirit of St. Louis got a “Who's Lindbergh?” The Washington Monument, a “Why don't they have air conditioning?” The Picasso got a corner of one eye with an eyebrow raised and no comment. As the complaints and lack of appreciation went on and on, instead of asking Anne if she liked it, I chose to enjoy it so much that she'd have to love it.
“Wasn't that wonderful?” I said as we came out of the Washington Monument.
Anne's eyes rolled.
“I loved all of it.”
“I didn't.”
“Your loss.”
“I don't think so.”
Another change after Anne became a teenager was the extreme interest in her mother, meaning me. I don't mean that she was fascinated by my thoughts, my values, my strong or weak beliefs, or my political leanings. It was my clothes that were taking up so much of her energy.
“Mom?”
“What?”
“Don't you think you should change your shorts?”
“Why? What's wrong with them?” I peered down at my black shorts and pinched the crease I had ironed into them.
“Nothing's wrong with them, I guess.” Anne looked my shorts up and down, up and down.
“Then why would I change them?”
“The waist is too high.” Anne's brown eyes locked into mine.
“That's where my waist is.” I felt the dimple on each side of my body and, sure enough, that was just where my shorts should have been resting.
“It seems kind of high.”
“I'm too old to be wearing hip huggers.” I saw a fleeting picture of myself at 19. Thank God it was a fleeting image. If it had been longer than a second, I might have become depressed and unable to continue the conversation. I wore hip hugger jeans, skin-tight in the thighs, with bell bottoms coming down from just under the knees. I was Cool with a capital C. I blinked and the image disappeared.
“They'd look better than those,” Anne said with total conviction.
“I don't think so.” After four children the body goes. Anne should have been thanking me for giving up my body as I helped the four girls come into the world. My hips of the distant past were bony and I'd had a much bigger curve in the waist area. However, as I approached middle age, the indentation became more like a dimple on each side and the iliac crest was covered with flesh. It was definitely much softer.
If I did wear hip huggers now, the size of them would be so enormous that Anne would probably collapse from laughing. At least she'd be laughing though, and if she passed out, we wouldn't be hearing all the complaining.
I pondered going back to my teen years for a few seconds and getting a shorter pair of shorts. Then, thankfully, I saw another image. It was of a middle-aged woman trying to push and shove her flesh into a pair of hip huggers. Kind of like the wicked step sisters in Cinderella trying to work their generous feet into the glass slipper. This was not a pretty sight and definitely not cool.
I simply was not uninhibited enough to pull off wearing the above, all for the sake of a few chuckles and my teenager's approval. Anne would just have to accept my high waist, fleshy hips, and too long shorts. I had to every day of my life.
The other part of me that seemed to intrigue her was my hair. One day, she looked at it from all different directions. I finally couldn't stand it one more second. “What are you looking at?”
“Nothing.”
“It doesn't seem like nothing.”
“Okay, as long as you asked. It's your hair.”
“My hair?”
“Yeah, it's too big.”
“What do you mean, too big?” I remembered all those teased hairstyles of the Sixties and mine didn't fit into that category at all.
“It's kind of high in the air.”
“You don't know what big hair is, Anne.” I was about to explain how some of the girls in my high school ratted their hair, when I was interrupted.
“Yes, I do.” Anne looked at me when she said it. I knew what she was thinking; she didn't have to say it. I found myself smoothing down my already smooth hair and quickly pulling my shorts down a notch. For some strange reason, I felt very nervous about myself.
People were not exaggerating when they relayed stories about traveling with teenagers. It was everything they said it was and more. I remembered how I had dismissed all the mother's horror stories; now I could stand shoulder to shoulder with them and relay some of my own. We could shudder together.
I hadn't been prepared for the moodiness and lack of interest in places that were so interesting. I hadn't been prepared for the adversarial relationship that developed between parents and teenagers. Preschoolers and toddlers might have poked at each other but they still loved their parents. Friends were of paramount importance to teenagers. And the only place they wanted to be was with their friends. Paul and I needed another wise grandfather to help us.
I looked at my youngest daughter who was smiling and laughing as she skipped along. Suddenly I had the most awful thought. Anne used to be like that. In a short seven years, Colleen would be a teenager. And during those seven years we would always have teenagers. I quickly added on the seven years Colleen would be a teenager and got 14 years of teenagers. Many of those years we would have three.
I groaned inside and gave Colleen a big hug. She still let me. In fact, she hugged back with pure joy.
I told Paul my calculations about our years as parents of teenagers. He appeared frightened for a minute. “You won't have to worry,” I said. “They'll be so busy checking out my hair and hips they won't have time to look at you.”
Thirteen
The H Word-History
Each vacation creates a unique family history.
The first night in Washington, D. C., the girls had been shocked by the homeless people sleeping on benches and on the ground. One man covered himself with a newspaper for protection from the elements. It had been misting that night so the poor man had a wet newspaper over his head.
We saw other homeless people walking up and down the mall. They carried or pushed their small amount of possessions. The days were hot and humid but it really cooled down at night. Where did all these people sleep?
“Why are they homeless?” Clare asked.
“Each person has a different story.”
“But why?”
“Sometimes they've made bad choices and sometimes they've been very unlucky.”
“Don't they get cold?”
“I'm sure they get very cold.”
“It doesn't seem fair,” Clare said.
“It's not. I don't think anyone should be sleeping on a bench.”
“I'd be scared,” Erin said.
“Me too.” I felt so lucky to be abl
e to take a hot shower and get into a warm, soft bed at night.
“Why don't they do something?” Anne said.
“It's complicated,” I said.
“They probably have,” Paul said. “We don't know what they've tried.”
The discussion came up every day we were in Washington D. C. and we never came up with a good solution.
We wanted to vary what we were doing so the whole two weeks wasn't museums and history. On the third morning we slept in a little, since we planned to spend most of the day at the zoo. Besides, it was hard to arouse Anne and Clare and get them moving. They wanted to stay in bed.
Clare and Anne's late night cable TV watching was taking its toll. The whites of their eyes were pinkish with a roadmap of veins. The two of them moved tortoise-like toward the elevators as we went down for breakfast. Clare kept blinking and rubbing her bleary eyes. Anne yawned and yawned.
“What'd you watch last night?” I asked.
“Just a movie.”
“What movie?”
“I don't remember,” Anne said. She looked at Clare and something sinister passed between them. It could only mean that they had been watching a movie I would have said no to.
Sometimes I felt as though I was losing all control. As exhausting as little children were, there was nothing devious about them. Teenagers were a whole different breed. I vowed I would coerce the name of the movie out of Clare when we were alone. Then I didn't know what we would do. Paul and I couldn't ban the two of them from watching TV after we went to bed; they'd turn it on anyway. All they'd have to do was wait until we were sound asleep. We wouldn't hear a thing. We would have to come up with some kind of a plan. It was so simple when they were younger; Paul and I just turned off the TV and said, “Time for bed.”
Before the zoo, we stopped at the Washington National Cathedral. The open vastness of the space from floor to ceiling was extraordinary. Huge, circular stained glass windows flaunted all the colors in the spectrum. Who designs such magnificence and then makes it come to life? I had to turn in all directions to get the full effect.
And it was so quiet. Even though tours were going through the Cathedral, voices were hushed and reverent. People knelt or sat to pray. A peacefulness surrounded me. I stood in the aisle and I prayed. I prayed for guidance and patience with my children. I prayed not to take their criticisms so personally.
“C'mon, let's go.” Anne whispered. “What's SHE doing?”
I didn't have to ask who she was. I hoped the peacefulness I had felt for those few seconds stayed with me throughout my children's teenage years, or at least through the rest of our family vacation. On second thought, maybe the day would be enough to ask for. I would have to take it one long day at a time.
We spent the afternoon strolling around the zoo. We all liked animals so it was pleasant and fun. We joined the large crowd watching the panda bears walk back and forth. Then we meandered over to the elephants. Erin loved watching the elephants get a pedicure and a bath. They dipped their trunks in the water and sprayed it all around.
“Aren't they cute?” Erin asked.
“They're really cute,” Paul said.
“Do you think that hurts their feet?”
“No, they don't seem to mind it. The zookeepers have to take care of their nails and feet.”
Before we left we stood again to watch the pandas.
After the zoo, we went to the Vietnam Memorial, something Paul and I both wanted to see. Since the Lincoln Memorial was in the same area, we decided to revisit during the daylight hours.
Anne looked around at the Lincoln Memorial. “Haven't we already seen this?”
“We wanted to see it in the daytime,” Paul said. He walked into the Memorial holding Colleen's hand.
“And we wanted to see the Vietnam Memorial,” I said, following Paul.
“Are we going to be here very long?” Anne asked.
I knew she wanted to be in the hotel channel surfing. I would rather be seeing the wonderful things in Washington D. C. than sitting in the hotel room flipping all the cable channels on the television. Since this was my first time in Washington also, I planned to enjoy every minute of it, past and present.
“I'm going down to the Vietnam Memorial.” I gave Lincoln a last gaze and headed down the steps.
“Mom, where are you going?” Anne asked. She had been waiting on the steps for the rest of us.
“To the Vietnam Memorial. Wanna come with me?”
“Maybe.”
“Well, c'mon then.”
“What about Dad?”
“They'll be coming too.”
I pulled down the hem of my shorts, smoothed my hair a couple of times and walked down the steps towards the Vietnam Memorial. Paul and the other girls caught up to Anne and me by the time we reached it.
“Did you know that an architecture student designed this?” I asked.
“Really?” Anne said.
“Really. Her name was Maya Ling Yin and she was only 21.”
“Wow.”
A large ledger was filled with the 58,000 names engraved on the Memorial. The brother of one of the girls I went to high school with died in Vietnam when we were Juniors. I located his name and found the section on the Memorial.
As I walked next to the 493 foot long Memorial, people cried, people touched the black granite stone and rubbed the names with their fingers, people transferred the names onto paper with pencil lead, and people stood trying to take it all in. I fell into the latter category. I couldn't quite take it all in.
I found the name I was looking for but suddenly I felt like an intruder. After all, I hadn't known the young man. He had died so far away from home and left people who loved him. This was true of each of the names on the Memorial. They were people who had dreams that would never be realized because they had died for their country. I felt saddened as I walked away.
Clare was standing by Paul. “It's too sad,” she said.
“It sure is,” I said.
To the strains of “Do we have to go?” by our two TV watchers, we rousted Anne and Clare out of bed at 7:00 a.m. the next day. Clare blinked continuously trying to focus her eyes. Anne put her hand up to her mouth to stifle a nonstop yawn. Neither one said a word as we nudged them towards the front door of the hotel. We had to be at the Washington Monument by eight o'clock to board the bus for Mount Vernon.
Our tour guide talked as we rode through the Virginia countryside. Paul enjoyed these tours as much as I did. The guide flavored the landscape in such a way that it was easy for me to picture George Washington riding high on his horse as he went back and forth to Mount Vernon. This was no small feat as the cars and buses whizzed past.
We took our time touring Mount Vernon; walking through the house and the other buildings on the property. A wonderful porch stretched across the entire back of the house. Large, black wooden chairs sat comfortably on the porch. They faced out to the green rolling lawn and the Potomac River. Paul and I started to walk along the lawn to take pictures as the girls took up position on the chairs.
“Mom, she hit me,” Clare said, pointing at Anne. Paul and I turned around in time to see Anne pushing Clare away from her. She didn't want Clare sitting next to her. Erin poked at Colleen who was trying to get herself up in the huge chair. Colleen shrieked. People stared at our children as they gave each other dirty looks. The girls tried to move as far away from each other as they possibly could. I didn't blame the people, I was staring at our children, too.
Paul and I closed in on the girls.
“She hit me. Aren't you going to say anything?” Clare was indignant.
“Of course I'm going to say something. Anne, knock it off,” Paul said.
Anne looked at Paul and said, “When's the tour over?”
Colleen said, “What about Erin?”
“Erin, don't poke Colleen. In fact, all of you keep your hands off each other. Just leave each other alone.”
“But I didn't dooo anything. Why am I being y
elled at?” Clare said.
Some things never change. The thought was not a comfort as I recalled our driving into Yellowstone. I cringed when I realized we were starting the driving portion of our trip the next day. Nine more days. Nine more days.
Seven years previously the main problem was in the van; once that was resolved, things went smoothly. The main problem this time around was not the long drives, but the fact that one of our children simply did not want to be with any of us. She wanted to be with her friends.
We decided to go down in the direction of the other buildings on the property, separating our children from each other as we walked along. It worked for a short time, but after a while, we were just trying to kill time until the tour left. I was so busy keeping my body between our various children that I don't remember much of anything about that part of the tour.
As we rode back on the bus, we all looked out the window. We still had a tour of Arlington Cemetery and I was getting the idea that no one wanted to go on it. Suddenly, I had an awful thought. Maybe our girls were historied out already. What were we going to do for the rest of our trip?
“Paul, I think they're sick of historical places,” I whispered. I didn't want to talk too loud just in case I was wrong and I would be giving them ideas. Actually when I thought about it, I didn't give my children too many ideas; they came up with them just fine on their own.
“I think so too.”
“What should we do?”
“There's nothing we can do. It's already planned.”
“I'm glad we're not going to Monticello.”
“Me too.”
We had decided that we should drive down to Virginia Beach instead of Monticello. It would give us a break from the museums and tours that Paul and I loved. The girls could swim and relax on the beach. Everyone would be so happy.
First though, we had to make it through the tour of Arlington Cemetery. We got on a tram bus and the tour guide began. Whatever the girls thought was their own business as they all looked out the windows.
Warning!: Family Vacations May Be Hazardous to Your Health Page 9
