by Karla Lester
Life is full of the unpredictable.
For anyone with a queasy stomach, this blog is not for you. For anyone who has spent even one moment with a child, you’ll be fine. This is real life, folks.
My family has a lot of inside family jokes from our trips and one liners from movies. We constantly quote movie lines from National Lampoon’s Vacation. Our most famous inside family joke is from March of 2008, LPS Spring Break for our oldest.
It was a time of transition in life and I was running on what felt like empty. It was only two months before I was leaving my pediatric practice to officially launch my nonprofit, Teach a Kid to Fish, when our family of 5 headed to San Diego for “vacation”.
As any parent knows, all the planning in the world can’t possibly account for what happens when traveling with kids. It’s humbling, to say the least. It’s also not relaxing. Let’s get real. We are the quintessential overcommitters at our house. We had committed to the trips and the memories. Clark Griswold has nothing on us. As you read on, you’ll find we are more like Cousin Eddie.
Katherine was 7 years old, Audrey 4 ½ and Andrew was 19 months. I recently happened upon a video made on a camcorder, if you can believe it, of the trip. I have so much compassion for our sweet family when I watch that video. We were definitely doing our best trying to take care of Andrew who started to get sick on day 1, and stay on track with planned activities to Legoland, Coronado Island, Sea World and the world famous San Diego zoo. In the video, Katherine is going through the differences between African and Indian elephants and naming everything. Audrey is wearing her all pink beach outfit, putting sunglasses on and lipstick. Andrew is toddling around. They’re so adorable. They’re now 25, 22 and 19 and I would go back in a second if I could.
On the plane ride there, Andrew, who had a cough and a slight fever, really declared himself. Illness will either declare itself or it will go away. As a pediatrician and Mom, this may not have been my finest moment. Andrew started vomiting as we were getting off the plane. We were stripping his clothes off and ours as much as we could so that by the time we reached Avis, he was in just a diaper. I would give him tylenol and pedialyte and he would rally and act like his 19 month old self. Then, start up with symptoms again on and off during the trip.
As a pediatrician Mom, which overall is a big positive, but not always and when in San Diego, not of great benefit, the only option would have been to go to the Emergency Room and he wasn’t to that point. Kids rally. Andrew rallied and we headed to the San Diego zoo as planned the next day. Things were going swimmingly at the zoo, the kids cracking up at the balls of hippo poop plopping out of hippo butts at the hippo pool.
We got to the line for the Skyfari Aerial tram, which was very popular per the long line. As we were waiting, the line stopped moving. There was a hold up for some reason. Then we hear behind us, “Great. It stopped. We are going to be late. We will never get there in time. We are going to miss it. I can’t believe this. We’ll never make it!”
Then, “Mom, chill out. Relax. Stop. It’s okay.”
I glanced back to see what Chicken Little looked like to find a middle aged woman with her adult daughter and two kids. This lady was the Chicken Little, the white knuckler of the century.
Chicken Little said to us, “Your family of 5 is going to need two cars. You’ll have to be divided up.” She was counting up the number of people in front of her. Her panic was getting stronger as she was deciding whether or not to get out of line and walk all the way through the zoo back to wherever they needed to be.
It was pretty hot and humid and Andrew was getting feverish. As Chicken Little got into full panic mode, Andrew looked back over Dad’s shoulder, right towards Chicken Little and right onto the asphalt in front of Chicken Little and vomited.
Chicken Little exclaimed, “Oh my God! The Baby Puked!”
Then she turned to her daughter and said, “Let’s go.” Chicken Little pivoted on her heel and ran off. As they say, a baby vomiting right in front of her at the zoo wasn’t on her bingo card. Chicken Little had a whole lot of things on her bingo card, but she couldn’t have predicted that.
Cut to the camcorder video of the scene of our young family at the condo after “OMG, the baby puked!” I want to tell my younger self to get prepared for the future OMG, the baby puked moments coming up in life and in my career. It seems like there have been and are so many unpredictable moments. Good and bad.
We are facing them everyday with the Weekend at Bernie’s President who shows posters of his larger than skyscrapers pool while bombing Iran, gutting Medicaid, and ICE and detention center crimes against humanity.
OMG! Are you frickin’ kidding me? The baby puked again!
Getting a new diagnosis.
OMG, the baby puked!
Losing a job.
OMG, the baby puked!
There’s no predicting the chaos of life. Life declares itself. It is full of unpredictability and lack of control. Rigidity, panic ensues in the everyday and yet, to have the capacity for the OMG, the baby puked moments, we all must shore up our energy and live in the moments of joy that happen in between.
I hope Chicken Little made it to wherever she needed to be by the time she needed to get there.
Stop.
Take a pause.
A change of plans is fine.
