Settling In Gently by R.A.Davis

Well. About ten days ago I smooshed all my junk, three kids, two cats, and a hamster into my little Honda Fit at 6 am. I was reminded, while wrassling the toddler into her five point harness, of trying to squish toothpaste back into the tube. We set out. I had an incredulous feeling-- I know I am forgetting important things, I know I am doing this imperfectly. But I'm doing it anyway. A feeling of walking off of a cliff and hoping that your earnest and in depth study of Leonardo Da Vinci's flying machines will save you on the way down. The road was long and dark. The 6.5 hour push to Boise took about 6000 years. We didn't stop-- well, just once, to lift the bikes off the back of the car and check on the cats (unhappy, but drugged, thanks vet) and eat hummus and tortillas. And the next push, from Boise to our new home, was a fugue state. All weathers occurred, all landscapes blurred crazily through time like a slowmotion watercolor. Greening riverbottoms dried into bro...

Well hello world! I did something ridiculous last week. On my middle child's 7th birthday, I surprised the kids with a last-second trip to Disneyland. I took a video of their faces as they opened the trunk of the car and saw the packed suitcases-- their confusion turned to deeper confusion. The new 7 year old began bouncing around and the 9 year old munched on her doritos in profound shock. Hours later at the airport she asked, "Why are we going to Disneyland?" I said, "Just for fun!" She looked blank. "Oh." So I may have failed in instilling a rabid lust for all things Disney and Princess in my children. Up till now I always thought of that as a sort of cultural triumph-- that and they've never been to McDonalds. After this week though I feel a little differently about my kids' cultural upbringing. I've missed some opportunities to create a shared experience with them-- to plant the seeds of nostalgia. The first few years of my oldest...