Recently, I made a family trip to Malaysia. Even before I left, I joked with my friends, “The word vacation is too aggressive. This is a family trip.” I believed I was going in with both eyes open, ready to fully manage the occasion.
Except I didn’t anticipate pneumonia. I thought I’d covered everything – swimsuits, plastic pails, yellow shovels, and baby food. I’d apparently forgotten my portable nebulizer and antibiotic stash. Poor Avik, from the minute the plane landed in Malaysia, he was miserable. We kept hoping the sea air would cure him, but the infection stayed. On day three, I headed off to the Langkawi emergency room.
As I made repeated trips to the cashier to pay for tests and back to the gloomy ER, I found the sunny attitude I’d been cultivating so carefully over the past few months failing miserably. It was as if my psyche started to catch an infection too. I grumbled under my breath at the system’s slowness, at my hunger, at the fact that people kept staring at me. All the while, I knew that I was helping nothing. I was just dragging down an already stressful situation and even ducking a chance to see into the eyes of other fellow patients and find camaraderie and kindness. But frankly, I did not care. I wanted my bed. I wanted Avik to breathe clear. I wanted to wake up to room service, a cocktail, and a book on my Ipad.
The next two days were rough. Avik couldn’t sleep so at night, Suresh and I took turns holding him. When we happened to be beneath the white sheets of the king sized bed together, even our feet couldn’t touch. Manika slept horizontally (head in my face, feet in his) between us. She apparently liked the feel of nestling close to the bed board. Each attempt to move her caused her to yelp, which woke up Avik.
“Who are you and why are you in my bed, stranger?” I sarcastically joked to my husband.
By day three, Avik was getting better and the kids started to get into the vacation groove. A green cocktail or two actually got consumed poolside. On the last day, we collected sea shells, ate dinner at a Thai restaurant that sat at the end of a very long plank, right in the middle of the ocean. The word vacation ventured to the edges of my and my husband’s lips.
Then we checked out and went to Kuala Lumpur – another Asian city with traffic, cabs with boots too small for my double stroller, dizzying megamalls, hotel pools too tiny to spend all day in, and history too inaccessible to children. I found myself on October 8 (Manika’s birthday) in MegaPlayland watching her bounce in some big red bouncy castle.
“I can’t believe I’m f*&*%!# spending my f*&$#@&! vacation, vacation!, in the land of plastic jungle gyms and inflatable trampolines,” I muttered under my breath. “What the $%$^! I have to get out of here.”
“Manika, let’s go,” I said.
“No!!!!”
“If I don’t do something for myself now, and I mean NOW, I am just going to….
Well, let’s go!”
It all went downhill from there. I spent money, I whined, I tried not to snip at my husband (who was a victim too) but couldn’t help it. I constantly exhaled heavily to express my annoyance, I stared out into the city not registering anything but my own misery and my need for silence, SILENCE, and solitude.
When we finally got back to Shanghai, my bad attitude persisted.
Manika and I playing Mickey Mouse Uno: “No Manika, you can’t have all the wildcards. It just isn’t right. You have to share.”
“But I want them.”
“Well, I want a week at the Four Seasons, by myself. We can’t always have what we want. You. Have. To. Share.”
“I don’t want to.”
“You have to share with me.”
“No.”
“Well, then I don’t want to play with you.”
To Avik screaming for breakfast at 7:00am: “Go ahead Avik, scream. See if it makes me move faster.”
To my husband in response to a request to make him some tea: “Are your arms and legs broken?”
I was like a spinning top, except with cactus-like spikes lining the surface.
I tried meditating but my mind was not into it. There was nothing to meditate on, nothing to meditate towards. What good was an empty mind when everyone kept needing into it? I tried sleeping, but that seemed a bottomless pit. I just couldn’t get enough. I tried a massage, time to myself, but that just made me want to cry. An hour oil massage? Paltry. An hour at a coffee shop? Insignificant! I wanted a week, no a month, no a YEAR!
Finally, I just let go. I had to. I internally imploded and then collapsed. My body refused to run, walk, move from the couch unless necessary. I just let myself be negative. I stopped trying to dig myself out of it, think positive, or control my frustration. I let myself be myself, my whole self. I drank vodka martinis at 4pm. I watched Mad Men episodes until too late an hour. I wrote lots of fevered escapist writing during which I refused to talk to or see anybody. I gave up seeking lessons from my kids, trying to be a good mom, worrying about them or my husband, and I just got selfish. I complained, I whined more, I told my friends I was irritated, I yelled at my husband for not being home more, I told my kids exactly how I was feeling.
“I hate that you wake up at night,” to Manika.
“You want some cheese with that whine there buddy,” to Avik.
“I don’t care what you wear to work,” to my husband.
I was just negative.
And then a magical thing happened. Twenty-four hours into my surrender, I started to feel better. A few things happened that, at the time seemed unimportant, but rolled up together. Manika picked up the “I love you’s” as if instinctually she knew I needed them. In the middle of an argument between me and my husband, she interrupted us and said, “Oh, just say you’re sorry and kiss please.” Then we were out to brunch with friends, and she figured out a system for sharing her IPhone game all by herself. She organized three toddlers to take turns. I was so proud. She was so assertive and self-reliant. She took such good care of herself. The next morning my husband hugged me and that sort of sealed it. I was back up. It was almost instinctual, as if my soul was saying, “Okay, we’re good now. Go back to your regularly scheduled program of balance and sanity again.”
It made me think that all this bombardment of “be positive” messages is being overdone in our society. Oprah, Nick Jr.’ Kailan, Disney’s Special Agent Oso – they all make it sound as if you’ve got a problem, got a drag on your energy, just think “happy thoughts.” But in fact, what I needed was not to pull myself up by my bootstraps, but for me to let my family pull me up the way I do for them so often. As a result of my surrender, I got to be surprised by their ability to do it, even little Avik who seemed to smile in the middle of my crankiest moments. I was particularly moved by how hard Manika really tried to “work with me.”
“Are you done writing?” she asked me on Friday.
“No honey.”
“Okay, I’ll play with the Ipad.”
“Are you done now,” she asked me five minutes later.
“Not yet honey.”
“Okay, I’ll come back.” She waited by the bed. “Are you done now?”
“It’s only been another three minutes.”
“When will you be finished?”
“Okay, I guess I can be finished now.”
Not exactly when I wanted to stop, but I realized that she was at least trying. My husband realized that hugs made me better; yelling at me to cheer up didn’t. It was as if by me expressing myself, everyone came to realize that even mommy has limits, bad days and temper tantrums. I think I became more human to my family, they became more human to me and I remembered that I was only human myself.
It was an unexpected result of two weeks together, but looking back now, I’m positive the intense proximity recombined the four of us with a different dynamic, something better, more together. The word vacation remains an overly optimistic description, but perhaps “family bonding” was more appropriate, or “an opportunity for my family to form relationships rather than operating in the day-to-day working-towards-getting-the-kids-to-grow-up mechanics.” Or stated more simply, the trip was “a reminder that no one can find happiness all the time and without a little help.”
