Raw Drip

Tabitha’s creepy talking baby seems to have found a permanent home with us. Once I discovered the all important off switch on baby’s back side, Dick was okay with her.

But looking around my bedroom on any given morning, I’d venture to say that the almost magical appeal of that creepy talking baby has less to do with its ability to speak and more to do with the Tabitha’s grasp of her own creepiness.

Victim #1: The Sock Monkey

Since the infamous baby doll murder in the Target parking lot, Dick and I awaken each morning to find what amounts to a stuffed animal morgue in our bedroom. As we sleep in the pre-dawn hours, Tabitha quietly spreads her animals and baby dolls about the room, covered with tiny baby blankets, hand towels, and dinner napkins. It’s like a little scene from the Jonestown massacre, only without the charismatic leader or the Koolaid.

This morning was no different. As I staggered from my bed to the bathroom, my toe hit the delicate knit paw of Tabitha’s sock monkey covered by a dinner napkin. Nearby, Tabitha cautioned me in a whispered voice, “Be careful, mommy. The baby is sleeping.”

Carefully stepping over the sleeping monkey, I had almost made it safely to the bathroom when I stumbled across another victim, this one a baby doll whose sprawled figure could just be made out under the tiny yellow blanket.

Victim #2: The Baby Doll

“No. That’s the dead baby,’ she replied.

Gulp. Well – alrighty, then…

Like most concerned parents, Dick and I have begun saving up for psychological counseling. We hope to be able to send Tabitha for help soon. Just in case, I think we should modify our retirement savings plans to include the cost of keeping a good defense attorney on permanent retainer.

I’ve broken the cardinal rule of parenting. I’ve purchased a talking toy. Worse, I purchased a doll that’s motion activated, thus making the “Chucky” parallels even more dramatic. Why did I do this, you ask? Well, mostly it’s because I’m a huge sucker, unable to resist my daughter’s charms. Of course, like most things, there’s an element of guilt involved as well, although not mine for a change.

Generally, it’s been my observation that Tabitha’s always getting the short end of the stick. With her and her brother only 14 months apart and Adam being the more intense personality of the two of them, her needs always end up taking a back seat to his. Even as a newborn, I was constantly forced to rip my nipple from her mouth, tossing her into the sofa cushions to save her brother from his toddler self. Even now, Tabitha’s needs, opinions, ideas and preferences almost always take second place to those of her brother. It’s a fault of ours as parents that we’ve allowed this to happen. With Adam being the more difficult of the two, it’s always easier to explain things to Tabitha than it is to convince him to cooperate.

The other night was no different. While preoccupied with lecturing her brother on his lack of listening skills, Dick was fastening her into her car seat when his general inability to multi-task surfaced, leading to an uspeakable oversight on his part. Hearing a thudding noise a few minutes into our trip home, we didn’t think much of it until Tabitha cried out for her baby. With horror, Dick looked over at me and instantly we realized that he’d put Tabitha’s cherished baby on the roof of the minivan (along with the baby’s beloved blanket) and drove off, baby and blanket presumably flying off into a muddy grave somewhere along our route home. Frantically re-tracing our route as darkness loomed, it became apparent that Tabitha’s baby was gone and we’d have to explain one of life’s harsh truths to our little girl: sometimes you just leave your baby on the roof of the car…

As the reality of her loss sunk in, Tabitha’s eyes welled up with giant tears, which spilled down into glossy streams on her rosy cheeks. To her credit, she cried for only a few moments, when, in an exceptional display of fortitude, she redirected her grief into problem solving.

“We have to go look for my baby”, she said with determination.

“Well, we’ve been doing that, sweetheart, and we can’t find her. I’m afraid your baby is gone.”

“I lost my baby at the store?”, she asked, bewildered about where it had all gone so tragically wrong.

I could see the guilt already creeping into her mind. I knew where she was going with that line of thought and, as a fellow female, I felt compelled to nip the negative spiral in the bud.

“No. YOU didn’t do anything wrong! You are a wonderful mother. Daddy made a mistake and lost your baby, but you didn’t do anything wrong!”

Dick shot me a look – the look that says “I think you’re taking this a little too far” and then rolled his eyes.

“We’ll go back to the store later and you can pick out a new baby. How would that be?”, he offered.

“Yes”, she said, apparently resigning herself to the loss of her only child.

Over the next few days, I watched as she played with her stuffed animals trying to shove their floppy, Styrofoam bean-filled bodies into her baby’s empty stroller. Awkwardly, her stuffed animals would slump forward and tumble out of the stroller, unable to maintain a snuggled position. Bottle feedings were no better with the large, floppy teddy bear being too unwieldy for her cuddle and rock in her arms.

The final straw came for me when, yesterday, she pointed at the last place she’d seen her baby – the Target parking lot – as she said wistfully, “That’s where I lost my baby…”

I couldn’t stand it. Here she was, not even 3 years old yet, and already taking responsibility for someone else’s mistakes! In her, I could see all my own neuroses taking form. Marching into Target with her, I vowed that not only would she have a new baby, I’d make sure she always knew that she was a wonderful, caring, and responsible person. No one’s putting this baby in a corner!

Walking down the doll aisle, naturally Tabitha’s eyes glazed over at the sight of all the beautiful babies lining the shelves. Initially, she reached for a doll similar to the missing baby. But as we walked past another shelf, a motion-activated baby let out a little cooing sound, grabbing her attention.

“Mama”, the baby said, followed by soft giggling and subtle movements of its head and arms.

Tabitha practically threw the inanimate baby she’d been holding into the shelf, reaching up for the animatronic baby whilst standing on tippy toes. Throwing her arms around the baby, Tabitha shrieked with delight, “I want this talking baby!”

Desperately, I tried to persuade her that the talking baby wasn’t as cuddly, sweet, or needy as the other babies. A baby who talks that much probably isn’t a very good listener, and we all know what that’s like (Adam). To bolster my spoiled brat argument, I pointed out that this talking baby came with tons of accessories including a comb, a binky, a bottle, and some toys. Clearly, this baby already has a good life here at Target. But the other quiet babies, without all those fancy accessories and forced to live in plain pink, unbranded boxes, were in need of a good home and a devoted mother like her. Briefly, she looked conflicted and confused – after all, when had I EVER characterized having more accessories as a bad thing? But the lure of the talking baby was too great. Gazing into her baby’s blinking, rolling eyes Tabitha remained undeterred, “I want THIS baby.”

As we carried the scary talking baby around the store, I began strategizing ways of switching her out for one of the plain, non-speaking babies. But it was hard to get Tabitha’s attention, even to distract her, given that she was so, completely enraptured in conversation with her new baby.

“Baby want a binky?”, she asked her new infant.

“Oooo. Mama.”, the baby replied blinking and rolling it’s soulless eyes like a drugged mental patient.

But when she held the baby up to me and said, “See mommy, I have a good baby and I’m a mommy, too – just like you!” I knew what I was going to do. I was going to buy that creepy talking baby and try like hell to justify my decision to Dick.

Driving home I had the entire talking baby conversation with Dick in my head. I knew he’d bring up that we’d made a pact long ago; no talking toys – period. He’d bring up that we’d both honored that agreement until now and that the benefit of this decision was that we had a much quieter household with toys that support our children’s budding imaginations, allowing them to put words into the mouths of their toys, rather than some corporate entity.

I agree with Dick on all these points and I do, generally, go out of my way to get the children toys that are unbranded, lacking in a need for batteries, and requiring more of their imaginations. But this was different. Call me overly dramatic, but I can see my girl’s future ahead of her and it involves a ton of guilt and self-esteem issues. Being female, very tall for her age, intelligent, and wearing her heart on her sleeve as she does, she’s going to know all too soon what it means to feel awkward and inadequate. In this rather innocent mistake – losing her baby – I could see the seeds of all her future torment being planted and I felt compelled to stop it. Besides, Tabitha should be rewarded for her years of patience, her generosity of spirit, and her loss should be salved with a spooky talking baby, if that’s what helps her move on.

In the end, I explained all of these points to Dick who looked on sympathetically. But much like the talking baby, I don’t think he’s buying it.

Many years ago, my brother inadvertently coined a term I still use today – paycation.  The brilliance of the term lies in the fact that you really do start paying for a vacation long before you ever leave, and you’re usually paying for it long after you return – and I don’t just mean the financial end of it. 

Paycation Planning

As far as I can tell, paycation planning is all about blood, sweat and tears.  Oh, and being robbed by travel providers.  This phase is dedicated to all the painful detail work and organization that will, hopefully, result in a relaxing vacation.  Typical tasks in this phase include:

• calendar coordination amongst multiple people – some of whom are far too young to have their own lives yet
• arguing with family over which sorta, kinda nearby relatives you’re going to hit (or skip) on your trip
• route planning – aka, Why the hell do I have to go to Newark via Denver?
• And, my personal favorite: being mugged by hotel, rental car companies, and airlines who shamelessly nickel and dime you when they’re not busy scrutinizing your footwear or your Oil of Olay for potential weapons

The Execution

I chose the word execution on purpose because after all the stress of the planning phase, you’re usually ready to kill someone.  But if you were successful in the first phase, this is the point where all the planning either 1) pays off or 2) gets shot to hell by some small, but crucial detail you overlooked. 

Once underway, a typical paycation involves recklessly spending money in the name of fun by acquiring tacky, overpriced crap you’ll never see, touch, smell, eat, wear or use again; things like cheap, plastic coconut-shell shaped branded cocktail glasses or neon green t-shirts that say “I got f’d up in Cabo!”.

The Return

You’re back home.  The house smells kind of funny and it’s weird having no dog around to greet you at the front door.  Your posse is exhausted, but as parents, you have no choice but to spend the next 3 hours unloading and unpacking about ten times the amount of stuff you left home with. 

Of course, if you actually managed to detach from the rat race while you were away,  you now hesitantly fire up your computer to prescreen the horror yet to come, a ritual also known as checking your office email.  Usually there’s a ton of routine stuff and two or three bombshell messages that are so staggeringly bad that you briefly strategize a plan for faking your own death.  When you finally do drag yourself back to work, you spend the first day smacking your forehead against your desk wondering why you ever thought you could truly get away from it all. 

Vacation may be over, but you’re still paying for it… 

*****

Like many people, I have more than my fair share of family paycation horror stories.  I’m sure my mom and stepfather thought they were the ones paying for the trip, but my recollection of events implies that the payment was spread evenly amongst us. 

My family’s paycations were unique in that we never really “went” anywhere.  For some bizarre reason, we would spend 3 weeks a year driving from fabulously interesting Southern California , a mere 30 minutes south of Los Angeles, to Dullsville, Oregon, Notevenonthemap, Idaho, or worse – anywhere in Utah – home of all the white people.  It was like my folks went out of their way to find places that no one else wanted to visit.  Regardless of the ultimate destination (although the word destination seems a bit generous…) our annual roadtrip always included a stop in Vegas.  The trip to Vegas would’ve been great had it not been the gritty 70’s/early 80’s era Dan Tanna-esque Vegas.  You know, the good ‘ole adults only, non-family-friendly Vegas.  Being under age in Vegas back then meant I spent my paycation time either hanging out in a cheap motel room with my baby brother watching TV while my folks stayed out gambling or going to nude reviews all night long, or it meant hanging out in the midway at the Circus Circus hotel with one roll of quarters allotted for several hours of G-rated entertainment, which, in reality, only provided about 3.57 minutes of gaming fun.  Between the sentence of solitary confinement in Vegas, to the ultimate death sentence of third row minivan seating before the days of rear air conditioning or DVD players, my paycations were complete and utter misery, lacking a journey or a destination.   Thank God for Judy Blume books and the Walkman. 

Aside from our stays in Vegas, my famiy was way too cheap for hotels so we would usually sleep in the minivan at roadside rest stops.  Occasionally, driver exhaustion and body odor would force my parents to spring for a $29 single at the Motel 6 – my brother and I being smuggled into the room under blankets or stuffed into my stepfather’s military issue duffle bag to get the cheapest rate.  

Describing my childhood paycations to my husband and friends nowadays, I’ve likened them to the movie National Lampoon’s Vacation but without the wacky fun of the dead aunt on the roof rack.  Worse, I realize now that for the amount of money my family spent driving around on these pointless odysseys we could’ve actually gone somewhere – maybe even somewhere interesting.  I mean, no kid wants to return from summer vacation extolling the virtues of exotic Corvalis, Oregon.  No offense, Corvalis, but for that same $3k, I bet I could’ve had a hell of a time in sleep-away summer camp or visiting every amusement park, museum and mall in Southern California.

I’d like to think that I’ll never fall into the trap of dragging my children on dull travel adventures in the name of family fun, but I’m sure we’re destined to repeat history.  Already, Dick and I are formulating a plan for a one week roadtrip culminating in a visit with relatives the kids don’t know in a place where visiting relatives are the only source of entertainment.  Surely, that plan is frought with potential for misery suitable for many future therapy sessions.   

Upon further reflection, I guess the merit of my childhood paycation experience is that, not only can I recognize things that aren’t fun, I also have an amusing set of travel annecdotes primed for entertaining others way more than the paycations themselves, ever entertained me.  Of course, there’s also the bonus of being able to play the “guilt” card on my kids in the future.  What better way to counter complaints about their misery than to share one of these stories about being slowly suffocated in the back of a minivan for 3 weeks.  I suppose that alone is worth all the paining, the pining, and the paying.