Runaway Mom

I have spent 1 night in the past year away from my kids. Worse, it has been 4 years since my husband and I went away alone together to reconnect and relax. Now I know there are lots of parents out there with much longer records than that (either by choice or by necessity), but I am not in the group that chooses non-stop parenting for years on end. I love/need a vacation. It revitalizes me and helps me miss my kids rather than resent the endless demands of motherhood. It reminds me that I actually like my husband rather than just work beside him in the sweatshop that is raising children.

 
One would think that it would be harder to get away when your children are small, but for me it is the opposite. With young kids (and younger grandparents…no offense Mom/Dad) the majority of the effort in getting away was managing the logistics and the schedules of the adults in the mix. For years Steve and I were able to sneak off quite regularly. So where did it all go wrong?

 

Well for one, the kids now can express (loudly and succinctly) how you leaving will stress them out, upset them, and generally piss them off. They have learned the art of emotional blackmail and are not afraid to use it. Secondly, the kids now have elaborate schedules requiring transport/coordination/planning which is a lot to put on someone watching them. To make things more difficult, since we have moved to Philadelphia my parents live half the year 6 hours away and the other half in Florida, taking them out of the child care assist equation. Add to that a kid with Asperger’s (Autism) for whom management is much more complex than it was when he was small and all of a sudden roadblocks abound when thinking of a grown-ups only vacation.

 

Yet I have to acknowledge my own role in braiding the rope used to tie me down to hearth and home. As one of the adults around here, partial responsibility for the chaos that has been our lives for the past few years falls on me. We have had to move several times and the resulting instability has shaken me, making me cling to routine and home to calm my own anxiety. That becomes a very slippery slope because the less you get away, the more difficult it is for the children to accept your absence and the harder it gets for you to feel comfortable about leaving. Not good…not good at all.

 

So what is a Mom to do? Do I book a non-refundable trip for Steve and me to force my hand? Do I run away by myself to at least release the pressure of non-stop child rearing? Where would I go? What would I do? Spa retreat? Dig ditches in a Third World Country? Hotel with room service? Join an ashram? Go some place with a pool and fruity drinks?  Hmmm. I’m not sure. But one thing I do know is that if Momma doesn’t get a vaca soon, things could go from ugly to downright monstrous around here. Jo Family…don’t say you have not been warned.

Feudal Pool-dle

This is our second summer as members of a suburban Philadelphia pool club.  I grew up lucky enough to have a pool in our back yard and then at our last home we also had our own pool.  But now we live in the densely populated Philly burbs and have joined the herd heading to the private pool club.  What I have come to realize is that within the pool club herd there is a very distinct and non-subtle caste system that would rival that of New Delhi.

The bottom level is occupied by the oldest members of the club.  Grumpy old men in speedos are the lowest of the low, followed by grannies in long swim dresses, and bubbies/nonnas/yayas/babushkas wrangling unruly young grandchildren.  The pool culture is definitely one favoring youth/appearance and in no way based on respect for the elders of the community.

The next group is the one to which I belong.  The 40-something moms of tweens/teens rocking Land’s End Super-Slimming bathing suits with matching cover-ups.  We come for some peace and quiet, sitting on our chez lounge under an umbrella, reading trashy summer books on our devices, and enjoying our contraband drinks/snacks that we carried in our oversize Thirty-One bags.  I would say that I would also be surreptitiously enjoying the 20 y.o. lifeguard man-candy, but at my pool the only half-way ogle worthy young man is sporting an Al-Qaeda style hipster long beard and I just can’t go there.  We are mostly invisible…and honestly that’s ok.  All we want is some time to relax while allowing our kids to play/swim/socialize to the point of exhaustion.

Above us would be the young Mom’s with babies/toddlers whom may or may not be pregnant again.  They are the inmates from Baby Jail; standing in the wading pool, sitting on the steps of the bigger pool, managing children in floaties and swim diapers.  100% of their conversations revolve around new motherhood/babies and they are just excited to be out of the house.

Regular Dad type guys occupy the next wrung on the pool club ladder.  They come in all shapes and sizes from “I Used To Be An Athlete: Doughy” to “I’ve Let It All Go and Am Wearing A Swim Shirt: Heavy”.  But none of that matters within their circle.  They drink beer, throw their kids around the pool, and argue amongst themselves about sports or the economy.   Ah, the life of white middle-class guys in suburban America (cue any Springsteen anthem).

Now we are getting to the upper regions of the pool club food chain.  To steal a line from the classic “Sixteen Candles”…this would be “The Greasy Oily Beau Hunks”.  Guys in their late 40’s or early 50’s; Vin Diesel look alikes, semi-professional/recreational body builders, with bad tribal 90’s tattoos, fully manscaped, Jersey Shore The Later Years cast members, here to get their tan on while flexing.  The cabana boys have their buckets of light beer ready when they arrive and they claim their positions in the center of all the action on the pool deck for the day.

And finally we come to the tippy-top of this crazy pyramid.  These would be the partners of said “Greasy Oily Beau Hunks”.  A group of women I have nicknamed the “Leatherback Sea Turtle/Lounge Lizard Ladies Club”.  These ladies work out, nip/tuck/lift, tan year-round, and wear bikinis from TooYoungForYou.com.  If they get one more facelift they are going to be able to blink their ears.  Their suspiciously round, full breasts sit high and stationary on their chests, defying gravity even when the skin around the them fails to hold up its end of the bargain.  They cackle progressively louder as the pina coladas flow and sit beside their counterparts surveying their domain from behind mirrored aviator sun glasses.

So there you have it.  Suburban pool club in a nutshell.  I will continue in my mission, a la Jane Goodall, observing these groups in their natural habitats and report back any new discoveries.  Yet no matter how much time I spend “in the wild” with this subspecies…I don’t think I’ll ever fully fit in.  In the end I am still a girl who would prefer to float peacefully in her own pool without any of the social dynamics described above.   Maybe someday I will get to be her once again.