A Jen Too Many

Travelin' Oma's School Days Seminar - Day 2 Homework

~Blog about a trip that was a disaster. Ideas: "Our honeymoon should have been perfect, but" or "I woke up in Disneyland with chickenpox."

To be honest, my memory is a little hazy about that trip. Or maybe not hazy. Maybe I've just repressed large blocks of time.

We had gone travelling the previous summer with The Boy Child. I was 7 months pregnant with Oldest Girl Child, huge, miserable, already short of breath. It was only meant to be a day or two, but after visiting Kirtland we thought we'd jaunt on up to Palmyra, and after getting to Palmyra we realized the Hill Cumorah Pageant was going on and that seemed like something not-to-be-missed, so we stayed to see that, and, all in all, it wound up being a week before we got home.

It was a tiring, breathless trip, filled with small mishaps, but also full of wonderful experiences, memories that I still treasure. So, the next summer, it seemed only logical to block out the time to take a trip to Nauvoo to see the temple during its open house.

The trip wasn't all bad. I saw my first fireflies. I saw the place where some of my ancestors lived. Ummmm ...

Give me a second. I'm thinking.

Things went wrong from the beginning. OGC was the sort of baby you couldn't overstimulate. She was never happier than when in the middle of a noisy crowd, a trait that was apparent in her first few days. They was so much to see! Hear! Do! Learn! Even then, she was a raging extrovert.

Which meant that, faced with the stimulation of a trip, she wouldn't sleep. All day long that first day of travel, sitting in her car seat, watching the countryside outside her window, nearly delirious with delight. That night, at the motel, at 2 a.m., with an exhausted sobbing Mommy, who still hadn't learned to let Daddy take over sometimes.

I go blank after that.

The next thing I remember is standing in line to tour Carthage Jail. It was sooo hot. The line was huge. OGC wanted to get down and practice walking. I was Excessively Tired and Not Happy. I left my husband standing in line with the baby while TBC and I went to find a drinking fountain and a bathroom. I looked at several highly memorable and significant Mormon memorabilia with complete indifference, then shuffled back to the line to find my baby running around barefoot. Some ... woman ... had taken it upon herself to remove my infant daughter's footwear. It was too hot for a baby to be wearing shoes! she told me, smiling cheerily at the woman she obviously considered a completely incompetent mother. I was too angry to speak.

... filing through the uppper room at Carthage jail, hot, hot, hot, very crowded, just wanting to get out of there ... driving to Nauvoo, where we parked amid a huge number of cars, then walked and walked to get to the restored cabins ... TBC (or was it his father?) leaving my camera behind at the blacksmith's demonstration and not realizing until much too late that we'd lost it - all our photos, gone! ... getting baby food at some convenient grocery store ... sitting on the floor with an excited baby, so so tired, and too afraid to let her cry herself to sleep, because the noise might get us in trouble with the hotel management ...

The next day it is our turn to take a tour through the Nauvoo Temple. We are short on time when we finally get there, I don't remember why. Realize the baby's wet, ask where is a convenient place to change her. Get blank looks from the volunteers. After much discussion, get directed to a portable restroom, which doesn't alarm me. This isn't the first LDS temple open house I've been to, after all, and the facilities are uniformly clean and sweet smelling. (We put a lot of effort into making these things nice.)

Open the door and walk into the nastiest, filthiest public bathroom I've ever seen. Nowhere to lay the baby down but the floor and I didn't even want to set a foot on that floor, much less my baby. Obviously the volume of visitors has overwhelmed the small Mormon community in the area. Go back to the volunteers. I am worrying about missing the scheduled time for our tour. More confusion and blank looks from the volunteers. Impossible and ridiculous suggestions. I give up (she's only wet) and we get in line.

Ask another volunteer several minutes later, when we are nearly at the head of the line if there is anywhere to change a baby. Well, maybe. Back there? He thinks? Checking it out would mean losing our place in line, possible losing our chance to see the temple, all on the weight of a "maybe". Decide to take my chances with the perceptibly loaded diaper, but feeling increasingly frazzled and unhappy. Not to mention, the baby is heavy. I'd pass her to her father, but if her diaper goes, my dress is easier to clean than his suit.

More waiting in another line. We finally get in the temple. I am too upset and distressed, too worried about the baby's diaper to enjoy the once in a lifetime experience.

And then it happens. The diaper hits critical overload and a long line of liquid splashes down my dress. Luckily the absorbent fabric of my skirt catches it all. The brand new carpet I am standing on (back aching) is safe and dry.

I am ready to burst into tears.

We finish, go back out. See another volunteer, ask again about a place to change the baby. Get directed down a long staircase, to the first bathroom. Back aching, dress stinking, feet hurting, I look at those long stairs, then lose it entirely and give the poor young woman the most venomous glare and refusal I have ever given anyone in my life, frightening her and causing my husband to look at me as if I have lost my mind.

Sit impatiently and angrily through TBC and my husband eating something sweet. Frantic to get back to the car, where I can finally change the baby. Finally, finally, FINALLY!!! get to change the baby. Trying not to be angry on the way back to the hotel. Trying not to ruin the experience for TBC and my husband. Not succeeding.

The baby finally started sleeping a little on the trip back, but I still can't think about that trip without getting angry and weepy over it. And while we'll talk sometimes about the previous summer's trip to Kirtland, no-one ever brings up the Nauvoo trip.

It was years before we traveled for fun again.