EVERYTHING
FOR YOUR FAMILY
First Years
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“Up next,” promised the chirpy host of the morning TV show, “stress-free travel with baby.” My husband pointed at the television and summoned a laugh, but my own sense of humor had abandoned me hours earlier. Meanwhile, we sat in our profoundly unheated hotel room on Baja’s Pacific coast watching the baby-who-would-not-sleep roll his bulldozer across the floor while we contemplated another half-day’s drive to reach our holiday destination, our trailer parked on the Sea of Cortez. A December sunrise leaked through the curtains. I heard waves crashing on the beach and imagined what a comfortable place this might be in summertime, with windows open and wide breezeways channeling cool air instead of cold, freezing winter wind. Predictably enough, when the host returned, she proffered various products: a travel crib; a nifty, educational, car-seat mobile; a bottle warmer, which plugged into the car’s cigarette lighter; a VCR and monitor, also to be plugged in, though presumably not while bottles were heating. She made it sound so easy. Of course, I didn’t believe her. Yesterday’s 300-mile trek had been rough, and I doubted any product would have made it any easier, at least not for very long. Time waits for no man, right? Well, toddlers like our 20-month-old, strapped into their forward-facing car seats for three hours, conspire with elemental forces, challenging physics and Uncle Einstein. When it’s time to get out of the car, all laws of nature are moot. We’ve yet to get into an airplane with our little vagabond, successfully avoiding that particular challenge. But annual extended vacations in Baja and the Sierra, plus frequent assorted camping trips, keep us in a seemingly permanent state of packing and unpacking, planning and, when we can catch our collective parenting breaths, appraising the success of previous road trips. We’ve avoided buying stress-busting gadgets (if we spent more, we’d travel less) and instead rely on what we already own and can carry with us: food, toys, puppets, books, music, our good natures and, increasingly, the drama of the passing show outside the car window. We try to remember that travel is about more than just the destination. It is the journey too. We want our boy to see that world, to engage in it as we move through it. This means, of course, as with other aspects of our parenting, being present ourselves and modeling that engagement. Which means pointing, singing, playing, laughing, smiling, all while driving safely, and observing all posted traffic laws and exiting at the right turnoff. Indeed, good travel parenting seems to be about planning and timing and then seizing the unplanned moments as they appear: the serendipity of dogs, bridges, train yards and public parks those little surprises appearing en route which, we hope, not only distract, but also inspire and instruct. The farmers’ market. Bleacher seats at a pickup basketball game. An orchard. A collection of boulders in the middle of the desert. County and city parks, historical landmarks and scenic vista points, instead of the sterility of the official highway rest stops and the easy-to-resist charmless glare of fast-food joints and malls. And, yes, finally it is about knowing when too much time in the car really is too much. Later on that December morning, eating my huevos rancheros in the cafe while Papa and the little guy cavorted among the courtyard cactus, another traveling parent made his way wearily to the counter to buy coffee. The telltale clue of on-the-road-parenthood? Cheerios stuck to his backside like some kind of whimsical toasted oats constellation. I recognized the phenomenon. The door of our own tired minivan opens and a strange dry waterfall of desiccated cereal descends, wafting in the breeze like so much confetti. I used to be embarrassed. Now I merrily scatter it to the birds that gather round. Gas station stops become mini-nature shows. Gulls, pigeons, sparrows, crows. This is either “Mary Poppins” or “The Birds.” Or both. Yes, our little guy dines with us, whether we eat at a Baja taqueria or Anderson’s Split Pea Soup, but we also travel with a well-stocked larder of baby-friendly food: the ubiquitous Cheerios, stacks of rice cakes, pretzels, various healthy snack foods, all of which are capable of atrophying into tidy debris that rustle around our feet, and assorted sippy cups. Extended trips require a cooler with cheese, fruit, yogurt, carrot and celery sticks. Breastfeeding, of course, makes travel less complicated. No bottles to wash, no formula to warm. Mom becomes, for better or worse, a 24-hour diner. Our van is a mobile cafeteria. It’s also a library and toy barn. The basket of baby stash never leaves, though its stock is regularly rotated and amended, especially for long trips. And now our musical selections are often determined by, not the driver, but our car-seat passenger. To survive that final stretch the day before, we hit the replay button and listened to Bruce Springsteen sing Woody Guthrie’s classic “Let’s Go Riding in the Car-Car” some 15 times, an ironic anthem for our road-weary trio but one that cheered our traveler until we pulled into the hotel parking lot. In case you didn’t know, the horn on the car goes beep beep beep. Lisa Alvarez, an English professor at Irvine Valley College, lives in Laguna Beach with her husband and nearly 2-year-old son, Louis. She is a regular contributor to this column. |
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