Travel Time

Family trips are fun. One of the most thrilling days ever was when my mom surprised us by saying, ‘Guess what! You’re not going to school today! We’re going to Disneyland instead!!’ Probably every child’s fantasy come true. It was a gigantic gift that combined the thrill of spontaneity with a splash of truancy naughtiness tied up in a great big Happiest-Place-On-Earth bow. Nothing imaginable could’ve been better until after we arrived at the park and found out, not only could we spend the whole day there but we would be treated to an overnight stay in the Disneyland Hotel followed by even MORE merriment the next day. An unheard of elation overtook my sister and me and words cannot express the pure joy we felt. We had journeyed to bliss and were going to stay the night.

               After a jam packed day at the park, it was time to monorail it back to our glamorous room to settle in before waking up early to beat the crowds the following day. I couldn’t have more than five or six but remember thinking it was a particularly lush hotel room. I also remember being extremely impressed with the white pads of paper and miniature-golf sized pencils to go with them. Bedtime came and we were all snugly tucked in, imagining the glorious day lying ahead when Disneyland opened the following morning.  A few hours must’ve passed because it was the middle of the night and I was wide awake, feeling the magnetic pull of those pads of paper and pencils from the side table. Seemed like a pretty great time to start playing restaurant. “Hello!” I announced with energy not suitable for the middle of the night. “My name is Lilli and I’d like to take your order!” My mother, if her sleep is interrupted, is a VERY surly bear. She mumbled something inaudible from underneath her pillow. “Hi!” I persisted, “I’m your waitress this evening and I’d like to take your order!” Only silence came from my mother so I wandered over to my father’s side of the bed, navigating my way in the pitch black darkness. “Good evening, sir! Have you decided what you’d like to order?” He didn’t say much but I jotted down some scribbly marks with a quick efficiency on my crisp pad of free hotel paper. Climbing back over to my mother’s side, I asked her again what she would like to eat for dinner that evening. “Lilli,” she seethed, “get back to bed. NOW!” I couldn’t possibly go back to bed when there was an imaginary short-order cook waiting in the fake kitchen for her order. “But, I’m your waitress and I need to take your order!!” My mother sat fully up in her bed and barked, “If you don’t go to bed right this minute, we are leaving this hotel and going home immediately!” I think I must have been a little bit retarded. Or maybe just hankering for a huge helping of danger with a side of crazy. I was in the ring with a woman who, when it came to messing around with her sleep, saw no humor and would take no prisoners. I poised the tip of my pencil to the white pad of paper and asked in my most patient voice, dripping with hostess-like sweetness, “Would you like to hear the specials?”

               I don’t think we actually checked out at the front desk. I do think we ended up stealing the blue comforter off of the bed because I remember about 4 minutes after trying to take my mother’s order for the umpteenth time, I was sitting in the backseat of her car, bundled in the blanket, on the road back home. My sister was blearied eyed with exhaustion but her look towards me of utter contempt, knowing it was me responsible for her having to skip town in the middle of the night and missing the extra day at D-land will forever be ingrained in my memory.  Ask her. It still burns and it’s been 30 years.

               Other family trips would follow and some were alright but we never seemed to go the traditional, tropical, glamorous route. My mother was terrified of airplanes so we generally could only go where the Amtrak train would take us and the destination was always a surprise. She would wait until it was the departure day before unveiling where we were going. One time it was El Paso, Texas with a side trip to Juarez, Mexico. In El Paso we all gathered around the one tourist attraction: an enormous plexiglassed trapped donkey statue wearing a brightly colored saddle. Juarez was only slightly more entertaining as there I was convinced I was suffering through a brain tumor and I was going to die right there in the middle of the desolate, dusty road.

               One year we hopped on the train and ended up in Denver, Colorado during what the locals were proud to boast was the worst snowstorm in over 100 years.  Getting there was half the fun, though. My sister and I had always had a ‘thing’, similar to that ‘two for flinching’ business. So crazy, we were. Here’s the game as only an older sibling can create: she would try to slap my face and if she succeeded, I’d have to stop wherever I happened to be and knock my head on the ground three times. Inventive she is, my sister! So, sure enough, while we were jostling about in the dining car of the train en route to Denver, my sister reached over to swat my jaw. Whoo-hoo!! She got me! So I knelt down in the aisle of the moving train car to dutifully knock my head three times at the exact moment a porter was balancing a tray of food. Yes, he tripped right over me, sending the entire tray of food, silver domes and all, crashing to the ground much to the horror and amazement of the entire railway restaurant. A metaphor for what was to come in Denver: snow up to our shoulders and my sister stuck in bed with the flu. I’m not saying she deserved it but she did make a train conductor trip over me and drop his tray on my head. Karma’s a funny bird.

These adventures have only solidified my absolute love of travelling with my own young children. So far my favorite trip this year was when my husband and I took our sons camping. We were in our cabin thinking that maybe the rat we had heard in the middle of the night was just a figment of our imagination. Until we heard a muffled crunch crunch crunch followed by a hurried scurry and then in a flash there was our 18 month old shouting, ‘Doggie! Doggie!’  while trying to chase a panicked rat around the room.

               With getaways as glamorous as these, it’s a wonder why we ever stay home.