We like to travel as a family. We will pile in the van and go for a weekend - to Provo, to Disneyland, to Southern Utah.
Our trips will always start with a prayer - asking for obvious things like safety while we travel, that we can have fun, expressing gratitude for the opportunity to travel as a family to whatever destination it happens to be.
The most important thing I ask for, however, is that I will not kill my children.
Here is a log of how the trips have gone, without exception, for the past 4 months:
Mile 0: Open with the aforemention prayer and head on out the road.
Mile .5 (just past the gates of our neighborhood): "Are we there yet?" "Seriously? Did you really just ask that? Watch the movie."
Mile 1.2: "How much longer until we get there?" "Be quiet and watch the movie."
Mile 1.9: "He's touching me!" "Stop touching your brother and watch the movie!"
Mile 2.3: "Do we have to watch this movie?" "Yes. Be quiet and watch the movie."
Mile 2.8: "How long are we going to get there?" (This is little boy for "Are we there yet?")
Mile 2.81: I want to kill my children.
I have always reasonably enjoyed driving to and from Disneyland. Or to and from Provo. I can't say there has been much joy on these journeys recently, however. Don't get me wrong. I love going places with my children. I just want them to be quiet and not talk to me. Just watch the movie. (Or, maybe if I could get Face, Murdoch or Hannibal to tell me what they used on BA...)
How did our parents do it? There were no DVD players. No Gameboys (for most of us). No DS's. (I'm not really sure how to pluralize that properly - any ideas?)
No, my mom had the home-made-from-denim pocket wall hanging on the back of the seat in the suburban - or station wagon, in the pre-suburban days. In the pockets we had things like travel Boggle, flannel activity boards, coloring books, Madlibs, or [ahem] actual books to read. What's more, there was the license plate game, the alphabet game, or the "Let's each take turns picking a song and everyone sing it" game.
Sometimes, my mom would even read books to us (so we didn't have to read) - and we actually listened as though there was something interesting going on. No moving pictures in the vehicle!! Unless you count the scenic landscape out the window.
Whew. That's work. I don't have that kind of patience in me, I'm afraid. I just want to drive and talk to Nicki. It's so much easier to "Insert Disk" and "Press Play." Job done. Parenting complete. We let Brother Walt entertain our kids, so we don't have to. And we still claim the credit for said entertainment. (Hey, after all, we did buy the DVD.)
I have admitted in the past my selfishness. I am aware. Somewhere, I need to find the patience to have joy in the journey.
