Month: March 2017

Our Magical Spring Break

~ cindylw ~ Leave a comment

The countdown began about two months ago. Our reservations booked, our plane tickets purchased, our schedules cleared, and all we could do is wait and let the anticipation build. This was our first year experiencing spring break as parents. Our first year with school-aged kids where spring break was actually a thing. We felt compelled to make it special. And there seemed no better way than the magic of a first time Disney cruise. The excitement flickered through their tiny 6 and 2 year-old bodies and exploded in their eyes and in their bouncy legs as the countdown neared the single digits. 9 . . . 8 . . . 7 . . . 6 . . . 5 . . . 4 . . . 3 . . . 2 . . .

And off we were, carry-on backpacks for all, two suitcases well over the 50-pound weight-limit filled with swimsuits, summer clothes I scrambled to purchase that fit their ever-growing lanky arms and legs, sunscreen, princess dresses, pirate gear, snacks, beach toys, sunglasses, and all. of. it.

Disney definitely knows how to do it up right. We hit the pool immediately upon embarking the ship and the kids were in insta-kid heaven.  From that moment on, our days were jam-packed with dance parties, shows, outdoor movies, indoor movies, character meet and greets, water slides, beach days, and endless ice cream. Everywhere we turned, there was more fun to be had, and more new things to experience. It was happiness, wonder, and excitement on steroids.

As our days filled themselves with kid-magic and sugar, I couldn’t help but hear my own groans, exasperated comments interweaving with the greater cacophony of remarks of all Disney cruise parents surrounding us. There we were, in the “Frozen” spectacular show, when the kindergarten age girl behind me could not control her waterfall of sniffles. I heard her mom say, “use your words, what else could you possibly want? What else?” I turned around, wanting to chime in, “I’m right here with you, mama! That is the mantra of our trip!” but she was elbows deep in child-tantrum, and I wasn’t sure this was the moment she needed my moms-unite cheerleading banter. So I settled back into my seat, and heard my inner thoughts spoken aloud by the mother behind me. “We are about to watch Frozen. Don’t you love Frozen? We are on a Disney cruise. You have popcorn. Juice. You are wearing your favorite Elsa dress. What else do you need???” Preaching to the choir, sister. To the effing choir.

Here’s what I found out on my first kid spring break excursion. It was worthwhile. It was memorable. I am glad we did it. The kids had more than a blast for five consecutive days. But let’s be real. It was also utterly exhausting. It was overstimulating. It was teeth-grittingly exasperating. There were over-tired, over-sugared meltdowns to dodge and diffuse. There were missed nap times that were always a huge mistake. There were uncontrollable tears to try to interpret. There were lines to wait in with fidgety overly excited kids. There was that time we lost my 2 year-old for those eternally long minutes while we had been trying to juggle five plates of food and wiggly kids around our legs through the breakfast buffet. “Where is Claire?” my husband asked. We looked at each other with that frantic, bewildered sinking feeling. No seriously. I am not proud. But it happened. Don’t worry. We found her.

The anticipation, the expectations that we had laid out leading up to this week of spring break made each mini outburst seem exponentially harder to patiently endure as parents that were trying to create that magical family vacation.

 

If I am being completely honest with you, the best moment of this spring break vacation for me was coming home last night. I found myself on our tiny loveseat couch with my three kids and husband, tangled under a big blanket, listening to my husband read the very first chapter of Harry Potter to our kids. They sat still, captivated by the words of J.K. Rowling. And I thought with each sigh that left my body, that this was it. This was my vacation bliss. Just being still, surrounded by these tiny warm bodies in self-picked out mismatched pajamas. Doing the most exciting yet everyday routine of reading stories at bedtime. This is what I just so love and adore.

Our spring break trip was wonderful. We will have those memories for a lifetime. I will remember how my son’s face lit up when Mickey Mouse signed his autograph book. I will remember how my 6 year-old daughter smiled so big when she twirled in her princess gown. I will remember how my 2 year-old daughter nearly crawled up on the stage to touch a Disney character’s costume during a show. I’ll remember the gorgeous day we spent on the beach, swimming in the ocean and making sand castles in the soft white sand. I will remember with the greatest fondness seeing my parents experience joy with their grandkids. Thankfully, as time goes by, these memories will be the ones that linger and stay with me in pictures and in my memories. I will hopefully have a vague recollection of the meltdowns, of having to sunscreen and re-sunscreen wiggly arms and legs, of all the bulky bags of over-prepared kid emergency items I lugged around with me, of the over-exhausted tired tiny but astonishingly heavy kids that we had to carry back to our room at the end of the night. Honestly, I’ll probably be crazy enough this time next year, to think planning another fantastical spring break trip is a great idea, but for right now, I just want to acknowledge that under all that hype, under all those smiling, sunny, beautiful blue ocean beach photos, there are tears and meltdowns and exhaustion and hard work keeping it all together.

So Spring Break, we’ll fall under your spell again I’m sure, but to all you parents out there, it was tiring for me too.

 

A Love Story

~ cindylw ~ 1 Comment

Most love stories we see in the movies begin with a young man, a young woman, a chance encounter, or these days—maybe a swipe right on an online profile. But the greatest love stories are those that go untold. And this love story—this is one of the greatest I have had the honor to witness, if only for a few hours of their story.

She started with her confusion four months ago. Initially, it started as small things that most would not have noticed. A misplaced purse. Forgetting where the car was parked. Forgetting to mix the eggs into the cake she was baking. Nothing any ordinary person hadn’t done. But soon it turned into something more, he explained.  Getting lost in their apartment. Realizing she had opened the closet door instead of the bathroom door and the shame that followed that he couldn’t shoulder for her. The full out heaves of tears he couldn’t calm when she couldn’t find the bathroom after all. The heart ache of watching her grab armfuls of clothes from the closet and place them on the floor with such purpose, knowing there was only a mass jumble of thoughts and hysteria behind her frantic actions. It was a test of stamina to care for her, to look after her, to help her find the way in this narrowing, dark tunnel of her mind. It tired her too. And she slept. She slept after breakfast, she slept after lunch, she slept after dinner. Her waking hours became so sparse, but when she was awake, it was so filled with hyperactive conviction and activities that were seemingly purposeless. He would spend her sleeping hours placing all her shirts, pants, and dresses back in the closet. Washing stains off her clothes that she had spilled soup on. Salvaging what he could out of the trash of the oranges he bought yesterday that she had thrown away.

And soon, she lost her ability to dress herself. And it angered her. With such frustration, she would pick a dress, throw it on the floor, not knowing how to put it on. She would pick something else out of the closet, throw it on the floor, acting as if it wasn’t that she didn’t know how to put it on, but that she no longer wanted to wear it. Yesterday, she settled after picking a towel, laying it neatly on the ground, and with a satisfied content look, declared that this towel was in fact the dress she had decided to wear that day. He told me this, then fell into silence; keeping his eyes locked on my reaction, as if he couldn’t believe his own words, as if he wanted me to tell him they were not true.

He shared most of these things with me in rapid succession, with the same low, quiet, monotonous voice. His eyes tired but gentle; he spoke with such tenderness and love for his wife. This was a love that had grown over 51 years of marriage. Four months of hardship was worthwhile so long as he still had her.

She lay in the hospital bed with her eyes closed. I talked to her softly as I examined her. He chuckled at me, “you know she is probably stone cold asleep, don’t you?” She awoke when I sat her up to listen to her lungs. “Marty?” She said, startled by my presence. “Yes, May? It’s okay. It’s just the doctor. She is just taking care of you.” “Hm.” she grunted as her shoulders relaxed.

Last night had frightened him. “It scared me the way she was acting.” For the first time, he had seemed to slip from her mind. It had been different when it was the location of her purse, the location of the bathroom, or even how to put on her pants. Last night, she couldn’t remember him. She had asked for her pain medication, and when he gave her only one tablet as prescribed, she had become upset. Looking straight at him, she had said, “I don’t know why Marty wouldn’t give me the whole bottle so I could take what I want. He would only give me one tablet! ONE tablet! Can you believe him?” she had shouted at Marty. She proceeded to ask him to call the police, as there was a man in their home. She tried to leave the apartment without her shoes on with the car keys in hand. “And she doesn’t drive. She’s never been like this. It scared me.”

They met 60 years ago in fifth grade. They spent much of their adolescent years getting to know one another, and at the age of 20, they married. They spent the next 51 years married, 20 of those years married with multiple sclerosis grabbing a hold of her and settling into their marriage with them—an unwanted, dreaded third wheel. There have been good days and bad days, early on the good days outnumbering the bad days and making them tolerable.   These days, the bad days like a storm cloud ravaging all their days. There are days with falls. There are days with anger. There are days with forgetfulness. And every day that slides by, he tenderly holds onto the girl he met all those years ago. His one love.

I walked into room 14 of our emergency department, 4 hours into their visit. I found him sitting still next to her bed holding her hand in silence. The TV off, her eyes closed, the lights dimmed. Her presence—even in these dark days that have consumed them, even when he is losing his ability to care for her in the way he has for 51 years—her presence still his greatest comfort.

Where they go outside of the doors of our emergency department will be a new chapter in their lives. Their story is one of the great love stories that deserves to be told. A love that knows no end.