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Lemoinya cried when I hugged her goodbye. We brought her a box of food that we couldn’t bring with us, and she insisted on giving me a bag of almonds, and a chocolate bar for each of the kids. Her face is the color and texture of a baked apple, her whole life etched onto her face.
Alec has asked me to report that we did not, in fact, have too much food left over. I guess he has been reading my past posts. Perhaps I’m just in denial about how much we eat.
We boarded the ferry in Mesta Port, and before we even got going it became clear that the ride would not be as smooth as those we had had on our previous boats. I know that I get seasick, having once practically overdosed on a seasickness medication you apply as a patch while in the Galapagos. So as soon as I felt the rocking in the pit of my belly, I took motion sickness medication. Our kids have never gotten sick on a boat before, and we did not want to medicate them without good reason, so we took a chance. We weren’t out of port an hour before the summer bronze drained out of C.C.’s face and she began to turn green. I ran to the bathroom with her. She got sick, and C.C. does not handle the kind of discomfort she was experiencing well. She was really wailing there for awhile. We got her to keep some Dramamine down, and she calmed down in front of a movie. Meanwhile, my medication kicked in and I could not keep my eyes open. There were no couches for stretching out, so I spread one of our fleece blankets on the floor, laid down on it, and covered myself over with the other. I was knocked out for about an hour.
Two television sets were set in the wall in the front of the lounge where are seats were located, and they blared for the entire voyage. I asked one of the stewards if they could turn them down—it was clear no one was watching them. He seemed to agree, but then it never happened. So we were subjected to years-old episodes of The Nanny and Janice Dickinson’s Modeling Agency. I tried reading aloud to Milo but I was no competition for Fran Drescher.
When we finally arrived in Lavrios, after 9 pm, we were all tired and snappish. We have gotten along remarkably well given that we have no spent nearly 5 weeks together, 24/7. But sometimes you just have a bad day.
Perhaps Alec was prophetic when, months ago, he reserved us a room for the night at a rather nice beachside resort, the most expensive hotel of our entire trip. We needed it. We put the kids to bed and went down to the restaurant for a bite to eat, after which I filled the bath with hot water and bubbles, and sank down into it. Our Mesta bathroom had a tiny shower and, like many of the Croatian and Greek bathrooms we have had the pleasure of using, had its hand-held shower head mounted at waist height. Great for the environment, but not so effective for relaxation. And really difficult if you want to shave your legs. My butt kept bumping into the olive green shower curtain of unknown provenance. So the bathtub was a real treat.
When I was 4 years old, my family took a 9 week camping trip. My sister Leslie was 8 (Jody was not yet born). We had a VW camper and we did a complete lap around the continental US. We had a portable Coleman stove and a cooler for food, and ate only twice in restaurants. We didn’t stay in a single hotel. When the fish were biting, we stayed put for awhile. When they weren’t, we kept driving.
Perhaps this early experience predisposed me to think nothing of a 6 week road trip with Alec and the kids. When I mentioned our plan to a friend in Barcelona in the spring, she seemed surprised—“Wow, that’s a long time!” she replied. I wondered, for a nanosecond, if maybe we were crazy. I’m convinced that we are not crazy, and it has been a great trip. But I admit that recently I’ve been wondering whether my mother every got any alone time during that entire 9 weeks.
Luv, actually we ate in 4 cafes in 9 weeks. One night was the night men first set foot on the moon and we saw pictures of it through another camper's tent screen window as we walked by. One cafe didn't have key lime pie that I was dying to try. They were out of it so the waitress talked us into sharing a piece of carrot cake. Joe asked for the receipe he loved it so much... she wrote our address down on her receipt book and the receipe was waiting for us in our 9 week pile of mail,,, Still have it! Oh the camp stove was a big as a child's lunch box, one burner :}
ReplyDeleteCome to think of it, I don't remember being alone.... we joked about all of us going in to the barber when Joe got a haircut in Flat Top TX ... the town was soooo small there was nowhere else to wait out of the blazing sun. Once, Joe did suggest I take you girls in to town to the bubbling hot springs baths while he fished out on a remote stream. I was driving back after dark and ran over a HUGE snake stretched across the road near where I was to pick up Joe. I kept calling out to him to watch out for snakes... he answered my call and told us when he returned that he had to vault a barbed wire fence and then ran but his feet never touched the ground... can't you just see him carrying all his gear and flying. That is the only time I remember being away from him for a few hours but I had you girls for company. He caught and released the fish.
i also remember getting out of the VW to line up two long planks just as wide as our tires so Joe could drive us across a mountain stream where the road was washed out.
Memories.... you'll have a bunch of them and the beauty of it is this blog you've written to jog your memories. Priceless!