Part Five - My So-Called Vacation (by Reality Mom)
Reality Mom (a.k.a. author Corbin Lewars) shares memories of her "so-called vacation" in Hawaii. Click below to read:
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
We ran back to the car, dried ourselves off, and looked at the map for more inspiration. “We could go to the park, no never mind. Oh, there’s a botanical garden, no that won’t work. The fern grotto? No. Hmm, maybe we should just go out to lunch.” The tourists were partly right. When it rains eighteen inches in one day, there isn’t a lot to do in Kauai.
After we ate lunch, rivers of rain were pouring down the streets so we gave up on sight seeing. It was a wise decision, because an hour after we returned to our condo we heard that they closed part of the highway and we would not have been able to return home. We were still putting on a brave front, but I don’t think I would have survived torrential rains, no sleep, and being homeless while on vacation.
We never thought the rain would last for days. Come on, it’s Hawaii, the place you go to feel the sun. Fortunately, it didn’t rain the entire time, but it never got sunny again either. We were still able to go to the beach and to the pool, but we spent a lot more time playing in the sand than actually swimming. When Little Dude asked to go swimming we’d say, “You want to go in the hot tub? It’s warm in the hot tub.” Once he grew tired of that, we took turns shivering while swimming with Little Dude.
Just as I never should have looked at the alarm clock in the middle of the night, I also should never have listened to my dad when he talked about the weather. Ignorance was proving to be the best solution. I had falsely thought we had a bit of rain, but lots more sunny days until my dad said, “So out of ten days we have had three days of sun. I guess that’s not too bad.” Three days! That’s all! That’s awful! Once I heard that, I started my own calculations. So, little to no sleep for ten nights equals 100 hours of sheer agony. Plus the plane flight here and following migraine, add another fourteen hours of hell. As for hours of sheer, vacation joy, hmmm, let me think. Oh yes, there was that one hour when both kids were asleep in the condo and Jason and I got to go swimming together and have an uninterrupted conversation. That was nice. So, 114 hours of agony and one hour of pure joy. Those aren’t very good statistics.
By the end of the vacation, the lagoon outside of my parents’ condo resembled a lake, hills had crumbled causing houses to slide into the ocean, and people had even died. I had run out of ideas and patience for Odo’s night wakings and was cursing her frequently. After a night of sobbing, I handed her to Jason in the morning and said, “Get her out of here quick!” We were ready to go home. Even if going home meant another twelve-hour travel day and then facing more rain, a destroyed house due to angry, left-behind cats, and very cold temperatures, we didn’t care. At least I wouldn’t be sliding into the ocean. Or tempted to throw my daughter into the ocean.
Once we got home Odo started to sleep for five, six, even seven hours in a row and I started to feel human again. I was glad to be home, but was still disappointed about our so-called vacation. I felt as if I had gone out to a restaurant, spent a few hours there and paid the bill without actually being able to eat anything.
It so happened that several people I knew also went to Hawaii around the time that we did, but most of them went to Maui instead. As I listened to them describe their days of drinking coffee while basking in the sun on their lanai, snorkeling, swimming with sea turtles, hiking in the volcano, going out to eat at fabulous restaurants, going on a whale watching tour, and generally enjoying themselves immensely my only response was, “Oh, so you had a real vacation.”
To read more from Corbin Lewars, visit Reality Mom.
Read all five parts of My So-Called Vacation in Guest Bloggers.
Photo © Graça Victoria
