Okay. It’s time to start taking this seriously and acting like our family of five really is going to be spending seventy-four days next summer in a minivan.
“Why,” you ask incredulously, “would we possibly do that voluntarily?”
Good question. And one I’ve been asking myself quite often as I’ve lived in my comfortable state of denial. The only truly sane reason I can up with is that I guess it’s part of being married.
“Huh?” you ask again.
Let me go back to the very beginning.
My husband Gene’s family tree is very complicated because of various divorces and remarriages. Suffice it to say he has four sisters and a late brother; and, although none of them are his full siblings, he loves them all very much and takes his role as big brother very seriously. In age order they are Winnie, Angela, TaMara, Alina, and David.
Geographically they’re all over the country, so get out a map and a box of little red stick pins.
Winnie and her two children are in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Her ex-husband is in California. Angela lives on the New Jersey side of Philadelphia with her husband (who, by the way, is from Sweden so make sure your map has Europe as well) and their new daughter. Alina, our family nomad, has lived in Texas, California, and Vermont; and currently resides in Virginia just outside Washington DC. TaMara and her family – husband and two boys – are in Knoxville, Tennessee. Sadly, David, the youngest, was killed in a crash two years ago.
If you want to add more pins to your map, Gene’s parents are in Texas (his mother is Korean, though, so you can add Asia to your map as well), and his biological mother is in Knoxville near TaMara. In case you’re keeping track, they’re the only ones who share a state.
Gene, a high school teacher, and I live on Long Island in New York with our tween daughter, Sarah, and our twin boys, William and James. Not to mention, of course, my personal vacation home in the lovely and scenic state of Denial.
So you can see that the family is spread out and relies on email, Skype, phone calls, the US Postal Service, and occasionally UPS to stay in touch. Despite the distance, we’re close to all of them.
In 2005 Winnie, whose two teenage children were still living at home, was diagnosed with uterine cancer. In an ironic twist of fate, or an example of Higher Powers being in a REALLY bad mood, this came just months before the family lost their home to Hurricane Katrina. Gene was kept informed by TaMara, who served as the family newscaster, while Winnie went through testing, surgery, and treatment. It was hard for everyone being separated by vast distances. We couldn’t do all the usual supportive family things like cleaning her house, chauffeuring the kids, cooking them meals, and giving lots of hugs. But we sent love in all the ways we could, and we breathed a collective sigh of relief when it was all over and Winnie began her five year trek towards being declared cancer free.
No sooner had that sigh left our lungs than word came from Angela, who was about to start a family, that a suspicious Pap smear had led to a diagnosis of cervical cancer. That began another round of phone calls, emails, and fear. And this time there was the added sadness that after the surgery that removed most of her cervix, the doctors told Angela they weren’t sure she’d ever be able to conceive a baby much less carry one to full term. Angela was devastated and spent sleepless nights wandering through the brand new four-bedroom home she and her husband Per had recently bought in the hopes of a big family. Again we were faced with the pain of not being physically there to help and comfort them.
But those irritated Higher Powers weren’t finished with us.
This time we didn’t even get to breathe our sigh of relief before TaMara, who was only 29 at the time, called with the unbelievable news that she too had been diagnosed with cervical cancer. By then you’d think we were numb with shock, but we weren’t.
We were frustrated, angry, terrified … and motivated. Instead of sitting around and lamenting our inability to help Gene’s sisters from our distant home, we sat down at our kitchen table and made plans to do something.
It was at that kitchen table that Connor’s Army was born.
Named in honor of Gene’s “Army Brat” upbringing, Connor’s Army was our way of fighting back. Our first campaign would be a year-long battle in which Gene, an avid cyclist, pledged to ride his bicycle to work for a total of at least 2,000 miles to raise money for the American Cancer Society. We geared up and planned to launch his ride on January 1, 2007.
That must have really pissed off those Higher Powers because just two weeks before the campaign was to start and with Christmas only a few days away, Gene’s mom found out she had Merkel Cell Carcinoma, a rare and extremely aggressive form of melanoma. Needless to say, Gene began his ride with icy determination that more than matched the frigid temperatures of that cold January morning.
By December he’d ridden 2,054 miles, eight-year-old Sarah had gotten off her training wheels to start Connor’s Army Junior and logged her own fifty miles, we’d organized a New Year’s Day cycling event called The Victory Ride, and together we’d raised more than $13,000 for ACS. The New Year’s Day Victory Ride became an annual event, although it was eventually moved to April after too many snow cancellations.
In 2010, just before Winnie celebrated her five year milestone and we began the countdown to celebration for everyone else, Gene began spending his summers working for Sunrise Day Camp, the only dedicated day camp in the nation for children with cancer. The children and their siblings all go to Sunrise free of charge, which necessitates a lot of fundraising. So we decided to change the beneficiary of The Victory Ride and began helping Sunrise bring as many children as possible each summer to their beautiful campgrounds.
And that brings us up to date. Or, rather, to this coming summer when Gene will cycle across America to raise money for Sunrise.
At least, that’s what he’s been saying for several years now. I’ve been spending those years in my aforementioned vacation home, occasionally sending a postcard reading “Of course, dear” when his declarations of cross country intent made it within range of my borders.
This past August, though, those declarations actually entered my pristine space and trudged all over it with muddy boots.
It happened as we were getting ready for our annual family vacation.
We were going to Cooperstown in upstate New York. With two avid Little Leaguers and one burgeoning opera fan Cooperstown, home to both the Baseball Hall of Fame and Glimmerglass Opera Festival, was the perfect place to spend a lazy summer week.
Of course, in my world lazy only happens after voluminous preparation. My normal modus operandi where vacations are concerned is to over-plan every detail. My packing charts are infamous in our household, as are the itineraries that spark both ridicule and awe in my family. Typically I’ll first work out our activities for each day, followed by the generation of a list for each family member of the items they’ll be bringing to help them during those activities.
For instance, when we went to Disney World – a place I fervently warrant is not possible to enjoy fully without a detailed strategy in place well in advance – I created a twelve page itinerary complete with reservation numbers and a schedule of who got to sleep in the top bunk each night. It took me nearly nine months to hone my masterpiece to perfection, and I endured endless teasing about it. But it got us through Disney World with relative ease and a minimum of conflict, and it has now become a treasure of family lore on a par with the time Daddy cut down Mama’s forsythia with a gas-powered hedge trimmer (that’s a story for another time).
But there we sat on a balmy August afternoon with only three days to go and I had nothing. I began to think about perhaps maybe possibly playing this vacation by ear.
Although my family’s gasps were probably audible all the way to the precious vacation home in my private state, I tried to think of it as a step towards personal evolution. I was learning to be freer and less structured. To let myself, and consequently my whole family, roll with the punches and be more spontaneous.
‘Perhaps,’ I thought to myself, ‘life doesn’t have to be lived on schedule. Perhaps we can let ourselves experience it just as it comes to us.’
More gasps, this time from me and mostly of the hyperventilating type.
“I mean, really,” I attempted to calm myself. “I do know people” (most of whom I had to admit I had derided over the years) “who never have advance arrangements or contingency plans, and yet everything seems to work out just fine for them.”
“I’m going to do it,” I proclaimed. “I’m going to walk on the wild side.”
‘Perhaps,’ I thought, ‘I should have a back-up plan in place just in case …’
**********
But we survived.
And even more remarkably, I survived.
It was a lovely vacation with no advance planning other than accommodations – in a rustic converted barn - and opera tickets for Sarah and me. We didn’t leave anyone behind, we didn’t starve to death, and we didn’t end up in Canada.
And, most importantly, my head didn’t explode from the anxiety of it all.
In fact, I found it was very relaxing once I got past the stress of being unaccustomedly planless. The experiment was a complete success.
Not necessarily one I’d want to repeat too often, but a welcome respite for all of us.
Of course, I now return to the fact that we’re going to be leaving for the entire summer in less than six months and I have done nothing to prepare. I spent longer than that planning for two weeks in Disney.
I mean, it’s fine to try out my new free-wheeling persona on a seven day jaunt to a tiny hamlet in upstate New York; but I don’t think that’s going to fly when we’re driving across the dessert and run out of gas because Mama neglected to note that the service station we passed seventy miles back was the last one till the other side of the sand.
So with the image in mind of us slowly dying of thirst in some vast apocalyptic desert in the middle of North America, I figure it really is time to get down to it.
Well, I’ll wait a little while just to be sure we’re really doing this. Where are the keys to my private vacation home?
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