Vacation Odyssey #3

Day 2.
We all slept well. That’s the good news. And we’re on the road by 7:30 a.m. after a raucous breakfast that ended with my hooligans stealing approximately 400 tourist brochures for places we will never visit.
For the moment we’re quietly chugging along in our landfill, which is really beginning to smell.
“My lunch goal for the day,” I just said to Husband, “is for the kids to not eat chicken fingers and French fries.”
“Yes. I agree.”
“Maybe a Panera, or something.”
“Right. Because the Appalachians are full of Paneras,” he said. “God. Could you be any more suburban?”
“Well, honey. What do you think they’re going to eat at Mama’s Down Home Country Kitchen Diner?”
“Dirt. Or coal residue.”
So now we’re back to being quiet.

I’m thinking about the Diva asking me to explain Hamlet last night, and how she’s getting to the age at which she understands that bad things happen in the world. The other morning I was in bed reading the newspaper, and she was snuggled next to me watching television, which incidentally is one of the most awesome feelings in the world, when she said, “Mom!” in an urgent voice and pointed to an article in the paper. I looked where she was pointing, and saw the headline: Woman eats baby’s brain.
The Diva is a very good reader and it was too late to brush it off and tell her it was nothing. So I was stuck explaining to my 7-year-old that sometimes people get sick in their heads, like their brains don’t work right, and they think it’s okay to do terrible things. And she said, “Oh, right. My friend Jay told me there’s somebody at camp like that.” So I used that diversion to steer away from detailing the story of the woman who carved up her own 7-week-old infant and took a few bites of him.
This all makes me a little sad. I hate that I’ve got to stain, even slightly, her perennial sunny outlook on life. I particularly dislike introducing her to fear, even if it’s a healthy fear, the kind that keeps her safe from predators and prevents her from placing herself in dangerous situations. But I know it’s part of parenting. I keenly remember how I learned healthy fear. I was 7 years old, the same age as the Diva is now, when I broke the rules and rode my bike in the street. I got hit by a car. That showed me.
I certainly don’t wish that kind of lesson on my children. At the moment, I’m happy they’re safe in the back seat watching the Jetsons, and that their greatest fear is that we’ll spend the whole day in the car again, which we will.
Husband just found an NPR station. I’m going to sign off and look for a Panera.

Okay, succeeded in avoiding chicken nuggets for lunch. We had ice cream instead at the Natural Bridge Gift Shop in Virginia, and then we descended 34 stories into the earth to see some caverns, which were very cool. The Pterodactyl was fascinated, especially when we walked over some 2x4s and told him it was an underwater bridge. The Diva was bored to tears. Literally. She was cold. She was tired. She couldn’t see. She was scared. She only rallied when we left through the gift shop, but I’m proud to say we didn’t cave. Pardon the pun.