Sunday, March 25, 2018

Vacation

It's Saturday night, I was just in the shower and it is spring break, so I want to go somewhere. I was thinking of why is it always so hard for me to plan a trip and follow through with it. It always feels like I'm winging it all and doing a piss poor job. Being away from home, meaning pets and other family members, as well as spending money, makes me feel stressed out. My husband doesn't really help matters because he apparently limits what is acceptable in our family to what was a part of his, and even though his family did have financial resources, I guess they didn't take a lot of trips? I honestly don't know.

So I was thinking of how my family would take family vacations every year, at least when we were younger. We didn't have a lot of money, but what it didn't cost much to jump in a car, drive for 17 hours straight from Manassas, Virginia to Green Bay, Wisconsin, stopping for food at least once or twice, and then sleep in the spare bedroom of a relative. That was back when the speed limit was not 55 mph, apparently my parents did trade off driving and go all night. I don't remember that, the vacations I remember involved stopping over night, generally in what I thought was Wheeling, PA, but apparently was in the little strip of West Virginia that separates Pennsylvania from Ohio. My family would eat at the Howard Johnson's there, as I recall. I loved their kid's menu, and I think I always got the hamburger.

In the early years, we'd sleep at our grandparents house, which was very small, but had a lava lamp, which fascinated me to no end. We'd go to sleep in a bedroom--there were two bedrooms off a hall adjacent to the main living area--and I guess it was where my parents were going to sleep. Sometime during the night, my father would carry us out and deposit my sister and I on the couch. We'd wake up in a different place than we had gone to sleep, but my clearest memory of this is actually waking up while he was carrying me, and feeling very disgruntled because I was being taken from my warm bed and put on a new, cold surface. But then I settled in and went to sleep.

At some point, probably after my youngest sister was born, my parents started getting a motel room at a place called the Valley Inn. I loved that motel; it had a pool with a slide, and there was a restaurant in the front. We would go there for breakfast and get such wonderful foods for breakfast as eggs with bacon and toast, which seemed luxurious. I don't remember eating these kinds of food for breakfast at my house. That was probably where I had my first glass of tomato juice, and I loved tomato juice and have always associated it with being on vacation. It was a shock to me in 8th grade when I discovered that tomato juice wasn't universally liked. At some point during the visit, my parents would go out to eat dinner in a country club restaurant. I only remember going there once, but I know it happened more than once because when I'd ask where we were going to eat, my mother would tell me we were going to the country club which is where my youngest sister fell asleep with her head on a plate of mashed potatoes. Remember?

I don't remember that, I think mainly because I wss not there. One year we went, maybe the last year we stayed at the Valley Inn, I honestly don't know, but my older brother, his wife and their daughter was with us. The kids had to sleep on the floor because there were not enough beds for us all. And, for some reason, we had two bushel baskets of peaches with us--I don't know if they came were purchased somewhere along the way, or if my brother had brought them with them from Illinois. I had some slightly obsessive thoughts back then that would intrude and bother me, and I kept thinking about those furry peaches, and touching them and what if I had to rub them together. The contemplation of the horror of these textures colliding with one another kept me awake quite awhile. I think the next day I actually tried it as the compulsion was great, and then it wasn't as horrible as I had worked it out to be in my mind.

On that trip, we had gotten there and went swimming that afternoon. I went down the pool slide and tumbled over in the water a few times, and it took me a bit longer to get to the surface than I thought it would. My mother was watching me and asked me if I was OK, as she had noticed it took me awhile to come up. I was fine, but didn't go down that slide again. That night, I slept on the floor in the air conditioned room with my wet hair, and I woke up in incredible pain. I couldn't move my head, there was something wrong with my neck. My family had plans, I guess, but I did not want to go, so I was taken to the home of one of my mother's high school friends, and left there. I know there must have been an adult or a teen there, but I just went to sleep on the couch, feeling freezing cold and sick. I knew I was not going to get to go to dinner, but I didn't care. Apparently that was the time when my sister fell asleep at the table. I remember at one point, I must have woken up enough and looked at someone passing through the room. The person asked me if I wanted a hamburger. I did. It was wrapped in yellow paper with nothing on it but a little smiley face on it, and it was good.I don't know what was wrong with my neck, and why it made me feel actually sick, but I know they pain from my neck lasted for years. I would turn my head some days, and I'd suddenly get this weird pain that I can't describe, except in colors and flavors. I guess it must have been a spasm, but it never felt muscular.

We used to go and visit my uncle and aunt out in the lochs in DePere. They had this great old house that had a giant bathroom--I had never seen such space in a bathroom. It was an old house, so probably it had been converted into a bathroom, but I remember thinking it was impressive. They also had a lot of fun toys, including a Fisher-Price ferris wheel which I adored. Their children ranged in age from my age and up to teens, and they didn't seem to play with toys as much. Later they moved, because we visited them in a house in a regular neighborhood. I was kind of chubby by that point, and I was running on their sidewalk and feel and skinned my knee. I honestly thought I was past that by that age-=-I think I was at least 9--but I went running to my mother, who seemed suitably upset, and bandaged it and comforted me. Two days later, however, she was not feeling so kindly disposed towards me. I guess she was irritated, because I remember feeling demoralized. Then I noticed that water was running out of the bandage, I don't know why. My mother was disgusted that I still had the Band-Aid on and told me I needed to take it off to let it air out. She had this way of talking like she thought you were the dumbest, most disgusting thing on the planet--very scolding heavy. I took it off, but it still looked like a raw wound. She told me it was my own fault, that it would heal if I weren't so fat, and that if I hadn't been so fat, I wouldn't have fallen in the first place. You never knew what you were going to get with her, and we kids were always waiting for the other shoe to drop. She was never the same person when she was in front of her friends or extended family. My father was always the same man, always the same demeanor, but my mother would become a different person. I think she was ashamed of us--she told me once that she didn't want to take us to the mother-daughter brunch with her sorority because she was ashamed to be seen with us in public. I think she thought telling us that would help us, somehow.

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