The American Dream

We had an actual vacation planned for spring break. Kind of new for us. Most of our vacation days are used for family events and holidays. It was time. Time to take the kids on a trip. Take a break. As a family. All of us. For eight days. Eight days.

Isn't that the American Dream? Load up the wagon, hit the road, sing songs, play games? There's a whole movie franchise about it and everything. Only I'm more interested in the modern version that includes an airplane, tablets and iPods so no talking is actually required. Because, somehow, my children have opinions. This makes my mother laugh, while confusing to me.

Flew into San Diego on our way to Lego Land for the first leg. Drove to Carlsbad. To a hotel we booked online. A hotel with an unbelievably talented photographer/photoshopper/marketing genius. Genius.

And when we tried to call the front desk to report there was no hot water but couldn't because the phone didn't work, well, we just laughed. Because, vacation.

It was slightly crushing to walk to Lego Land and pass by the 5 star resort the husband had just worked on, the week before, but had no vacancies the week we needed. We looked at it longingly. All fancy. With it's hot water and working telephones.

There were two plusses to the hotel we stayed in. Which, really, is a motel. Possibly owned by the Bates Family. One, it had a pool. Young humans are happy in a pool. Two, it had continental breakfast. This is a great chance to stock up on processed foods to keep you going strong all day long in a theme park surrounded by a lot of other children.

The first morning, as I sat in the 'Lanai Room', I laugh just typing that, watching the other people I realized a couple things. One) I am far too entertained by my own narration of others and two) for every couple of young humans in the place there's at least one adult whose spirit is broken. Broken. Possibly irretrievably.

They sit there at the table holding a cup of crappy coffee, hunched over, like inmates look (on TV of course), eyes darting back and forth, eyeing up the last banana, while their completely wound up children race around the room and/or watch Cartoon Network on one of two really large, really loud wall mounted units.

But this is family vacation, right? This is the American Dream. Work hard, buy a house, take your children on some adventures, hope most of them go to college. Repeat.

So, your spirit dies a bit. You age. From all the noise, noise, noise.

In the end the young people had fun. And, we had fun. We laughed. A lot. We ate ice cream instead of actual meals. We got sun. We did vacation.

We did The American Dream.