A Five-Star Bastardson Family Thanksgiving

[The unexpurgated edition]

Darn it, out-of-town vacations with the whooole family just bring out the best in me. You can ask anyone. It’s common knowledge I always shine during the Christmas season in general, not to mention visits with the entire family (mine or anybody else’s except The Mainiacs). Add in the stress of making it a working vacation with the extended family on the biggest travel weekend of the year and holiday miracles are almost guaranteed to occur!

First the good news. Thanks to my brother’s new girlfriend, we stayed at a five-star resort in the chichi foothills north of the fetid, festering hellpit that is Tucson, Ariz. It was so swanky (the resort, not the town) we’re actually pining for a chance to go back there on the sneak, when there won’t be wall-to-wall family obligations to attend to, and avail ourselves of the amenities. As it was, it was just the really nice place where my wife and child slept between racing back and forth to compulsory family events before hopping on a plane at 6 a.m. Friday to head back to Christmas Island.

Even the trip out was engaging. The Boy chose the day we flew out to deliver three particularly spectacular diaper dumps. Dump number one occurred immediately after we boarded the first airplane, so we spent 90 blissful minutes looking for creative, discreet ways to staunch the ungodly stench in order to avoid having to change him in the vertical-coffin-sized airplane rest room.

At the Phoenix airport, while we waited for our connecting flight-

BREAKING NEWS!
Holy crap!! This India shit is fucked up! (I always write my blogs in MSWord and post them when they’re done, so it’s Wednesday afternoon and I’m writing about Tuesday morning). Suddenly the most unreliable internet connection in the world here at our fabulous five-star resort seems kind of a petty concern… except my job depends on me being able to successfully upload some rather large files and I’ve been dicking around with network preferences and tech support for over an hour now, while my deadlines get farther and farther away in the rear-view mirror… The Missus tells me that that’s the rule – the nicer the hotel, the more totally fucking worthless the internet access. She’s right. Awesome hotel, worst internet access in the world.

Getting back to my narrative… at the Phoenix airport where we changed planes for the second leg of our trip to the Bastardson Family Thanksgiving Reunion, while we waited for our connecting flight, The Missus hustled The Boy into the bathroom and changed his diaper while I stood in the Line Eternal at the Burger King for some fries for The Boy. Long story short, when the fries ran out, so did The Boy’s patience with the travel experience. Big hilarious scene. “FRIIIIEEESSS!!!” Screams of indignation, howls of protest… you know. Lots of Burger King customers praying they weren’t on our flight.

The next leg was literally a 20-minute flight. Up and down, welcome to Tucson. We go to claim our rental car – whoops, the company has gone out of business in the week since we made our reservation. Thanks, Bush economy! Okay, Thrifty Car Rental is gonna step in and hook us up. While The Missus haggled with the counter help, The Boy dropped Dump #2. Into the men’s room we go, no changing table so we do it standing up. I pull the diaper off – no excreta. In the time it takes me to go “Huh?” I hear a “plop” and The Boy points to the floor and announces triumphantly, “Poo!” After I get done detailing the bathroom floor and proceed to the wiping of the lad’s affected area, the usual deafening screams of “No! No! OWIE!! OWIE!! DADDY IT HURTS!” ensue. When we’re finally wrapped up and exit the bathroom, every pair of eyes in the tiny rental car shack is on us. I smile and wave to the crowd because I am a whore for the spotlight and announce that we’ll be doing another show at 11.

If only. After a grueling 30+ minutes of wrestling the baby seat into the American-made piece-of-shit rental car in the muggy Tucson heat, we’re just about to load The Boy into it when he looses his most extravagant Number Two of the day. Our tears of frustration melt tears of tears of utter, unbelieving resignation. We note that we’ve just used up all the wipes we packed for the four days and have to stop at Walgreens on the way to the resort to pick up some more.

The rest of Tuesday night is a blur. I don’t remember the details, but I was such an asshole to The Missus (because all of this stress is her fault of course) that she was barely speaking to me by the time we made it to my mom’s. Short visit, then it was back to the resort.

Oh wait, I’m remembering some of the details. Tuesday was a work day for me, I had people waiting on me to deliver new proofs on one of my publications and they didn’t know I’m ‘in the field’ and I’d really like to keep it that way. When we first arrived at the resort 90 minutes past deadline already, we had to park about (literally) a half mile from our suite, then be golf-carted to our destination by some inbred local cowpoke who had a spiel about every last infinitesimally inconsequential detail about the resort, a spiel that that never ends, and I’m just counting the minutes more late he’s making me. He’s going on and on about the amenities, saying ridiculous things like, “…one of Tuscon’s finest restaurants is right here at the resort…” and I’m thinking “You backwards hillbilly fuck – saying something is ‘Tucson’s finest anything’ is like saying ‘and this is the finest sewage treatment facility in all of Paris…’” I finally lose it and bark at him when he asks if we’d like to detour to go see I don’t remember what. “No, just take us to the room!” I snap. Jesus!!

Then the hit-and-miss internet connection just pushed me completely over the edge. Kablooey. (In my defense, it turned out the room phone wasn’t broken, I just accidentally switched lines when I repeatedly replaced its receiver at mach 3 from six inches away.)

I redeemed myself slightly at the end of the night when I worked my daddymagic on The Boy, who had long since hit the wall but wouldn’t/couldn’t go to sleep. (One casualty of the fucked up day of traveling is that he missed his usual 3-hour midday nap.) I dialed up the lullaby playlist on iTunes I created when he was a baby and was relieved to find that it still had the mojo. By the third song his head was nodding on my chest, by the fourth song, he was out like a light. Thank you, Kris Kristofferson.

Anyhow, Wednesday is a new day. I’m not well-rested because no matter how nice the accommodations are, unless I sleep in my own bed on my own weird schedule, I don’t sleep well. (Here’s a fun fact that always adds entertainment value to any vacation I take. When I don’t get enough sleep, by the second night I develop a debilitating case of mushmouth. Verbal acuity goes right down the toilet and I can’t get a half a sentence out without stammering; and I’m not talking Ayn Rand-length sentences with multiple clauses and parenthetical phrases either, I’m talking Hemingway sentences. This trip was no exception.) But I’ve promised The Missus I’ll try to stop being such a complete prick and for the most part, delivered on that promise, even as the day’s carefully calculated schedule fell apart in pieces in slow motion around me the way they always do when family is involved.

Finally at the end of the day, I caught up with my old high school best friend who has recently moved back to Tucson with his wife and 10-year-old daughter to care for his ailing mother. Haven't seen him since we went out shooting in the hills around Frazier Park, Calif. with his closet-full of guns six years ago and it was like I just saw him yesterday. He was in his cups by the time we arrived and peppered every sentence with six or seven f-bombs (the way I talk when The Boy’s not around, or when I’m blogging). I kept punching him in the shoulder and he’d laugh and say “Sorry!” and say frigging for about 30 seconds before reverting to form again. It was hilarious (well, I thought so).

And yes, you read that right. We went out shootin’ guns a few years back, lots of different kinds of guns. I felt as a left-winger it would be bogus of me to snipe about guns but then pass on the opportunity to experience the other side of the issue first-hand. The result? I fucking loved shooting the things and could easily see myself slipping down that rabbit hole. Somewhere there is a video of me turning to talk to the camera and both barrels of the 2x-barrel shotgun I was holding going off in my hands accidentally. Ah, the good life...

Thursday, Thanksgiving came and went mostly agreeably, even as sleep-deprivation was doing its usual thing to my ability to sp-sp-spe...talk. My brother and his awfully swell new girlfriend arrived, I cussed out one my sibs up and down again for daring to wake me during a rare nap, we had a nearly-formal (The Boy attended attired in his usual bright red Superman cape) five-star smorgasbord with the entire family — less Marine One, my nephew currently on loan to the US government to aid in its efforts to battle international terrorism and his efforts to get the hell out of Tucson — then everyone relaxed in my sister’s suite for drinks and told old family secrets for a few hours. It was the first time a number of us had actually met some of the others. The Boy immediately took any edge off that might have existed by grabbing the spotlight and not letting it go for the duration of the gathering.

The trip home the next morning was another grueling marathon. None of us liked getting up at 3 a.m. local time to make our 6 a.m. flight out of town, but The Boy was the only one to throw a 45-minute before-dawn meltdown at the almost-deserted Tucson airport United concourse. It was a beauty, the best I’ve ever seen him produce. He didn’t have the language to express “I’m so fucking tired I can’t think straight, why are you people torturing me?” so instead he became Mr. Contrary. Everything was unacceptable and an outrage. No idea we had was less than an egregious insult and the moment we agreed to any of his demands, he reversed them. If Mommy was coming to get him, he had to go into the men’s washroom. If Daddy was on the job, the women’s restroom was the only place he wanted to be. The trail mix we bought him was shoved back in our faces then demanded to be returned at maximum volume. And so on.

In our exhaustion, it was a miracle we ever got him settled down in time for boarding. And then he threw another fit about half an hour before we landed on Christmas Island (he kept pointing at nothing I particular and insisting, “I want thiiiiis thing, this thiiiing..!”) that was only resolved when a more-seasoned parent poked me in the shoulder from a few rows behind me. “Sir,” he said, handing me a packet of Jelly Bellys, which I gratefully accepted. We mixed them in with the trail mix we had picked up in Tucson that morning and the remainder of the flight was made in relative peace and quiet.

Actually, that whole plane trip was an ordeal. On the first leg, I was squeezed in next to some morbidly-obese young woman who was sneezing and sniffling the whole trip (I can already feel her cold coming on me, seriously), the plane was warm and stuffy as hell and some chick a couple rows back had her iPod earplugs turned up so loud probably the only people on the plane who didn’t hear her shitty music was the captain and co-pilot behind the blast-proof cabin door. The second leg was arguably worse. In addition to containing the Boy’s midair meltdown, there were ten other kids under 5 years old; all four of the idiots in the first row required extensive, obvious drawn-out instruction from the long-suffering flight attendant on everything from how and where to stow their bags to basic airplane etiquette; an airsickness case in the seat behind mine; and a belligerent dad about half-way back that was offered the option of cooperating and continuing on to his destination or being kicked off the plane before it took off from Tucson. I would hire that flight attendant (“John”) to run my Fortune 500 company, if I had one. On the way off the plane, I shook his hand and complimented him for his outstanding work under extremely trying circumstances.

After the air-travel portion of the trip, everything else went so smoothly neither one of us could believe it was happening to us and before we knew it, we were home at last.

The Thanksgiving trip ended shortly thereafter with a most splendid parenting breakthrough when nap time rolled around. As usual with these things, it started with a crisis narrowly averted.

What it boiled down to was, I wanted to watch the final episode of “The Shield” and it had been sitting on the TiVo waiting for me since Tuesday night. The plan was to put The Boy down for his nap shortly after we got home and The Missus would take her nap and I’d watch “The Shield.” Well in spite of being light-headed with exhaustion, The Boy got his second wind as soon as we arrived home. The Missus was still down with the original plan, but he most definitely was not. After a good half hour of his mother’s best efforts to put him to bed, I came in and we tagged off. She went to take her nap and I went to convince our beyond-tired, wild-eyed three-year-old to go down for the nap we all so desperately needed.

He was out of control, screaming his face bright red, trying to run past me out his bedroom door, and I was getting plenty irritated. He’d been out of control in bursts all day, but now his misbehavior was jeopardizing my TV–watching plans! I kept lifting him up kicking and pitching and carrying him back to his bed, trying to hold him still long enough to talk sense to him. No chance.

At some point in the wrestling match, I noticed that he was not phoning it in anymore, he was genuinely upset. He threw his whole body into his howls of protest, the cries took on a kind of keening quality that was coming straight from his heart… and suddenly I was looking at myself at that age, and I realized, I understand exactly where he’s at right now. I’m watching my own childhood through my mother’s eyes and reacting exactly the way she had… and I’m doing it for a TV show? One that I’m not even in!?

I decided if “The Shield” had to wait another day for me to watch it, it would just have to buck up and wait for me. What the hell had I been thinking?

I leaned back and took a less domineering posture. I stopped trying to talk over his screaming, and when he batted my hands away from him when I tried to comfort him, I let him. He kept repeating “Mommy Mommy Mommeee, I want Mommmmm…”

As corny as it sounds, I started talking to him instead of at him. Explained Mommy was tired so she was sleeping. We were all tired and we should all be asleep. He said, “It’s light outside. I don’t want to sleep. I want Mommmmeeee…”

I told him I was sorry I had been pushing him around. I told him I knew exactly how upset he was and that I was really sorry for making him feel that way. He looked at me with his ringed, red-rimmed eyes to see if I was playing him, then said “okay” so quietly I almost missed it.

And for the next 25 minutes I decelerated the situation slowly, letting him take the lead and set the pace. Not suggesting he do anything (because that only provoked him), but asking him what I could get for him till Mommy got up from her nap. First he wanted some peanuts. I said we don’t have any peanuts, “honestly.” He got all upset again, looking at me like I was Lex Luthor waving a kryptonite turd under his nose. And then I remembered – shit, we did have some peanuts, they were in the trail mix we got him at the airport and he knew he hadn’t finished them. Liar, father!!

So that mistake took me a while to undo. Gain back his trust. After he had eaten a couple of peanuts and a handful of Jelly Bellys from his snack container – at a snail’s pace – he asked for a Kleenex (“Nose…”), which he was by then sorely in need of. I went and grabbed one and he took it and began wiping his nose. And wiping and wiping and wiping… after a while I became curious and grabbed my glasses and a flashlight and took a closer look up his nostrils, after goofing with the flashlight under my chins and making monster faces. It was good to hear him laugh again.

Finally, we were both at a place where we could have a civil discourse. I’ve never before had the kind of linear, in-depth conversation with him that followed. I asked him questions and he answered them, and when I couldn’t make out what he was trying to say I asked him to repeat or clarify himself (gently, gently), and it became clear to me that his understanding of what I was saying was a great deal better than my ability to understand what he was saying to me. Still, I could talk to him in simple terms about oblique concepts in complicated sentences and he knew what I was saying. And then responded with the vocabulary and syntax skills he currently possesses. And with just a little patience on both of our parts, we had a better talk than we’d ever had before.

At one point near the end of negotiations, I was emphasizing the family’s tiredness because of the full day of travel. Mommy was tired, I said. I was tired. He was tired. “I’m tired,” he agreed. Then he added, “The plane is tired.” Yes, I said, the plane was tired too, it had been flying all day, just like we had. Then he added contrarily, “I’m not tired.” I said, Yeah, actually you are, son. I really need you to at least try to take a nap. Can you do that? Just try and see, okay? He paused then said, “Okay, I’ll try.”

He climbed back onto his bed of his own accord and seemed to be regretting already the stinker deal he’d just made. He stayed sitting up and looked at me skeptically. Then he looked over at his wall of toys. “Lots of toys,” he observed. Yeah, you can stay in here and play with your toys if that’s what you’d like to do, I told him. But you’ve got to do it quietly because Mommy and I will be sleeping, I half-lied. Okay? “Okay,” he said, without enthusiasm.

I gave him a kiss and said good night and left the door cracked. I checked back in five minutes later, and he was fast asleep. I covered him with his blanket and crept out the door, shutting it tight so he wouldn’t hear the horrible nastiness of the final episode of “The Shield” about to be blasting from the front room.

Usually, whenever he spends one of these few-day trips away from home with his extended family he comes back having made a quantum leap forward in his social skills. This time, I think we both came back bigger boys than when we left. Just the same, I can’t wait till we’re in a position for the family to come to visit us some holiday.

I’m a whole different daddy when I’ve got more than four hours of sleep a night under my b-b-b-bbelt.