Wet Feet

Setting out on a family trip inspires alternating waves of liberation and fear. While gazing at the highway, I think: “Thank God I’m not picking up Legos!” Then: “Dear God, what if our hosts’ sleeping loft has no handrails!”

A step towards adventure can also be a step towards danger.  This was not a big deal when I was twenty-two and single. It’s a much bigger deal now that I have two children.

Sometimes on trips, long-extinct dangers defy the time-space continuum and place themselves in my path. Like those razor-sharp, beer can tabs that were phased out in the 80’s. Remember, the ones your parents warned you about every time you unbuckled your sandals at the playground?  Last summer when I took my kids to my favorite childhood park, the memory of those tabs flashed across my mind. Not five minutes later I spied the telltale curl of aluminum just inches from my daughter’s bare feet. Man, I thought, that Law of Attraction sh*t is real!  I should have more reverently acknowledged that guardian angels are real. Because my kids and I kept our shoes off and waded in the water. There, we spent two of the best hours of 2011.

Vacation perils aren’t just man-made.  There’s the precipice along the hike.  The undertow at the ocean.  The water moccasin at the swimming hole. Then there are the memory-making activities. One minute you’re a living a photo-opp as you teach your kindergartner how to spear a marshmallow for S’mores. The next, he’s swinging a flaming plug of gelatin at his log-mates, screaming “I’m the King of Fire!”  As a parent, I grope around as if blindfolded, searching for a balance between my children’s elation in the world, and their need to learn safe limits.

Still, especially as winter closes in, it’s so good to get away. To feel Autumn’s chill elbow-blocked by a ninja bonfire. To climb a mountain and see through the leafless branches, that an ant trail highway can deliver me from–and and back to–my regular life.