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EXCERPT
The Magic Carpet Ride On Wheels
"A boy is a magical creature – you can lock him out of your workshop, but you can't lock him out of your heart."
—Allan Beck
Leave it to my wife, Laure, to come up with a vacation idea that could both excite and bewilder anyone, even a Tibetan monk. And leave it to her to suggest the idea moments before we ended an exhausting work day.
“Michael,” she said, just as I was settling into bed, “I have a great idea for a summer vacation.” For a few seconds, I pretended not to hear. “Why don’t we rent a motor home for a week?”
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Looking straight into her eyes, I yelled, “Are you crazy? Us? Our family? Renting a motor home? We don’t even own a tent! We can’t go ten miles without a roadside Hilton! You can’t be serious, Laure.”
She was serious. Very serious! I continued ranting for a few minutes, then she did it. She always saves the best for last, setting me up perfectly like a set of bowling pins, then tossing the perfect strike.
“The kids will love it, Michael,” she said softly. “It will be the adventure of a lifetime. They’ll get a real kick out of it. Never mind you, think of them.”
“That’s not fair,” I said. “Now you’re fighting dirty.” We both laughed and said goodnight. I never told her, but I was awake all night, having nightmares of being eaten alive by mosquitoes, smelling the septic tank back up into our RV, and paying hundreds of dollars for these unique experiences.
Summer rolled around and finally the day came when the kids and I picked up the RV. They excitedly ran around what would be their home for the next week, fighting over who’d get the top bunk bed.
A few hours later, we pulled out of our driveway and headed for Quebec City. Laure had made reservations for all the campsites, but we didn’t anticipate one problem. When we finally arrived at the site, it was 3:00 a.m., but we quickly discovered that it closed at midnight. We parked outside the gate and fell asleep hours later, listening to the rain beating against our new home.
The next morning, there was a knock at the door. Surprise! A man handed me a $100 ticket, explaining that we were illegally parked and had never showed up for our reserved spot on the campground. At that moment, all I wanted to do was go home. But one look at my wife and kids told me they were in it for the long haul.
We started driving again. We arrived at the next campsite with plenty of time to relax, build a fire, and have a barbecue. We met a whole new world of people and actually started to have fun. It was like we’d slipped into a parallel universe where people become addicted to a whole different lifestyle. Each site is like a summer camp, with a swimming pool, a park, and a central hall where adults play Bingo and kids buy candy. Nights were spent playing board games, meeting neighbors, and listening to them play guitar by the campfire.
But, after three-and-a-half days of nonstop travel, I suggested we find a place to sit out the rest of the week. Laure and the kids agreed, so we headed for Granby, Quebec, which supposedly had the best campsite for kids within a 500-mile radius. Granby didn’t disappoint and, for me, the real vacation began.
There were rides, pools, games, and hundreds of other children. There was nothing but sunshine and eighty-degree weather everyday. We all loved every minute of it.
It was a great time for us as a family. But it was also the first time I saw my nine-year-old son begin to go off on his own, getting his first taste of independence. Every morning, Jeremy would head off by himself for the giant trampoline, and jump and jump, as if he were trying to touch the sky. Then he was off to the shuffleboard courts, where he found lots of new friends, kids his own age.
Ironically, this family outing we’d planned, and which we’d all enjoyed so much as a family, had taken on a new and somewhat unexpected dimension—my son was growing up, and beginning to test his wings.
Isn’t life always this way? The experience never matches the expectation. You expect too much; you experience too little. But when you expect little, as I did on the magic carpet ride, you receive an experience to last a thousand lifetimes.
My wife’s prediction that, “The kids will love it…They’ll get a real kick out of it,” had come true. Jenna and Jeremy will never forget “The Magic Carpet Ride,” and neither will Laure and I. We knew they were the navigators. We were just along for the ride. |
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Share YOUR real-life stories about your children.
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| A child enters your home and makes so much noise that you can hardly stand it, then departs, leaving your house so silent you think you will go mad. |
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—John Andrew Holmes
( 1874-?)
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