DADWAGON

This morning, it looked like my wife was finally going to be able to break through the airport deadlock after Snowpocalypse NYC, so we (on vacation all, here in Florida) had to separate her from the kids. As I mentioned before, my kids barely spoke to me during the five days she was here, so great is their mama-need. So I was anticipating high drama when me and the kids got dropped off at NOAA’s (rather awesome, and totally free) Eco Discovery Center. The wife was headed straight to the airport after that, so I imagined a lot of gnashing of baby teeth and rending of toddler garments.

Instead, what I got was a few “bye, mom”s and a queen’s wave from the kids, who then turned to go eco-discover.

And then, something far more dramatic happened. Perhaps sensing that now, he was truly on his own in the world, my two-year-old son said that he had to go to the bathroom, and for the first time in his life, actually used an adult-sized restroom. Big poop, he said afterwards.

Big poop, indeed. Congratulations, son: keep on staying one step ahead of life’s little changes and things will turn out just fine.

A few months back I wrote a post about how disasters can be liberating, which I now know to be unmitigated, sentimental claptrap. Disasters are called disasters for one important reason: they’re disasters, as in, they mess stuff up.

Snow isn’t such a big deal, really, so long as you don’t have to do anything. I haven’t managed to make it into work these past couple of days after what’s lovingly being called “Snowpocalypse” by those sorts of people who come up with dumb names for things that are fucking up my vacation. I’ve worked from home, so that’s not a major problem. I managed to get the grocery shopping done before the anschluss, so there’s plenty of grub, a warm apartment, the TV works, as does the Internet.

But I also have a flight to Mexico tomorrow morning, where my brother, his two daughters, JP’s aunt, a set of grandparents (JP has three; four if you include Tomoko’s parents), and a free hotel room at a beach outside of Cancun wait. And I may not get a single fricking margarita out of the deal because of the snow (and our amazing, efficient, wonderful, lovely airline industry).

Before any of that fun stuff can happen I had to get Ellie to the pediatrician this morning for her next round of immunizations. My car is covered in snow, and the roads aren’t all the passable for non-four-wheel-drive cars. I couldn’t get a car service to come pick us up (I guess they’re snowed in, too). We tried the subway, which was running relatively well–three trains came by in under fifteen minutes. Unfortunately, they were so jammed with people that we couldn’t get on any of them.

So we walked; a good mile in the snow so that my little baby could be stuck with needles. Joy!

While I took great pleasure in tweaking Theodore yesterday for being snowed in in New York, it’s worth mentioning that not all is 24/7 hunky-dory here in the Vacationland of Palm Springs, California. To begin with, I seem to have pulled a muscle in my back, and am popping ibuprofren like candy. (As soon as we get back to our rented house in L.A., I’m raiding the vicodin I saw in our hosts’ medicine cabinet.) The most frustrating part of the pain is not being able to carry Sasha—it’s one of those tortures sometimes inflicted on parents, where for various reasons (injury, illness, restraining orders) we just can’t go near our children.

Of course, the way Sasha’s been behaving, I haven’t particularly wanted to be near her. To put it briefly, Sasha is no Nico. Feeding her is becoming a nightmare, with seemingly surefire foods like rice, noodles, and ground beef rejected outright with a definitive “No!” or, simultanteously worse and cleverer, “Bu yao!” This wouldn’t be so bad except that here in Palm Springs, we’re staying at a hotel and have to rely on restaurants to feed us. Last night, we were at one of those huge, terrible Mexican places that are perfect for kids: They really can’t do anything there to offend anyone, because no one there has any high expectations for the meal.

What’s amazing is how Sasha’s naysaying works. Lately, she will refuse everything on the table—everything except for the thing we think she’s least likely to want. Last night, that meant turning up her nose at rice, beans, tortillas, guacamole, and who knows what else before, in a beery moment of “what if?,” I put a forkful of carnitas in her face. And she ate it. And ate more and more and more.

So, great, carnitas. Except… it was really bad carnitas. Chunky and dry and flavorless. Even I was just kind of pushing it around my plate. So, while I’m glad she ate something, I’m also disappointed in her palate. Oh well, you can’t have everything. Or anything. Frankly, if my back didn’t hurt so bad I probably wouldn’t care.

Oh well, guess it’s back to the pool, the hot tub, and the acres of nubile rock chicks. It isn’t much, but it makes me feel a little tiny bit better.

Our family lives all over the country: the crusty disaster called California; the sweet, creamy filling of America, the sun-blasted bierhall that is Key West, where I grew up. Not only that, but much of my family seems to have fallen into various forms of financial or physical infirmity since my children have been born. So visits to New York to see the kids have been perhaps more rare than they would have otherwise.

What that all really means is, our kids have traveled. Not that they are getting much better at flying, but they’ve been plenty of places. But through all their travels so far, there’s been one consistent problem: they don’t (and won’t) remember any of it. In just the year that I’ve been splaying their lives out on this blog, they’ve had some beautiful days: camping near Yosemite, flying on a seaplane with me while I was working in the Dry Tortugas, not getting eaten alive by ticks in Missouri. But even for the older child, Dalia, who is nearly five, the memories seem run behind a fogbank almost as soon as the days end.

Until now. When we got off the plane in Key West a week ago, the first thing we walked past on the tarmac was the big green DeHavilland Otter seaplane that we had flown on in early summer. “I remember that!” Dalia shouted happily, as if her lack of memories had been bothering her as well. “I remember all of it!”

It may be easier to remember Key West, where stepping off a plane is a full-body sensory overload: hot sun, humid air, salt smell. But whatever the cause, I was happy about this.

This is, of course, complete narcissism. We want them to remember these trips, or even good weekends at home, because we take care to make them enjoyable experiences, and the idea that the kids won’t even remember this to thank us for it or to be gladdened by the memories is tough on the ego. This is foolish, because they will not only not thank us, but probably find some way to resent us for whatever they do remember.

Worse, there may be a downside to Dalia’s remembering of her life as it unfolds from here. Memories are heavy things, and they seem to only add to the leaden jumble and confusion of life in general. The younger boy, the two-year-old, is still living in a world where each day is just a day, where every night you press the reset button and begin anew. Life is just a mood. He may not remember (or, alas, appreciate) the deep snow day in Colorado. But he also has a sweetly light step through life: just as soon as he stopped continually coughing hard enough to vomit a few days ago, all memory of his pneumonia vanished. He didn’t mope about how much time he lost on this vacation, he didn’t rue a thing.

We should all be so lucky.