The Best Vacation Ever- as told by Paul

Thursday, December 18, 2014

Words cannot adequately describe what type of day this has been. Yesterday around 1 or 2 p.m., Rachel broke into a terrible fever. She was red all over and super sick. (poorly-as they say in England) She was snotty and miserable. She could hardly move all day, and just sat on the couch with a bottle, burning up. We were worried for her for a bit, but after Mel walked to the store to get medicine, we pumped some into Rachel and she cooled down some. Near bath time, Rachel was shivering with chills and aches. You could tell she was lethargic and achy, and I took her up to bathe her. She loves her baths and obliged rather eagerly. It was the first time we’d really seen her perk up all day. After the bath she was shivering again and crying. It’s so terrible to see your children suffer in any way.



When it came time to put Rachel to bed, she was absolutely freezing with chills. I put her in bed all tucked in tightly and snug and she just lied there shivering. My heart broke as she shook under her covers and I asked her, “Rachel, are you cold?” There was a brief pause before she squeaked out, almost inaudibly, “Yeah.” I went downstairs and told Mel I was sleeping with Rachel tonight and I got ready for bed before going back in with Rachel. I picked her up out of her crib and put her in the single bed we had in her room. I climbed in with her and pulled her tight, then tucked the covers in around us. I held her close and gently stroked her hair as her burning body shivered gently. I then asked her if she wanted to say a prayer. Again, she whispered loud enough for me to hear, “Yeah.” And I asked if she wanted to say it. She began with “Heavenly Father,” and, as she’s only nearly two years old, waited for me to help her with the rest. I helped her pray to the God of Heaven to ask for a simple blessing of relief and comfort, and when I said to her, “ask Heavenly Father to bless Rachel,” she paused for a moment, and in the most sincere and helpless voice said, “bless Rachel.” I can’t explain the feeling that came over me, but I immediately began sobbing and pulled Rachel closer to me to hold her tightly. My love encompassed her almost as much as my tears that now covered her little cheeks.



We held each other close until she fell asleep, and I couldn’t help but lie there and think about what had just happened and how I felt. My love for her was immeasurable and uncontained. There was nothing earthly or worldly that could describe or quantify the love I felt for my sweet daughter offering up a sincere prayer to her Heavenly Father to bless her in her sickness. I know more definitively, and it grows with every fatherly experience I encounter, that God is indeed our Heavenly Father and He knows us. We are not part of this mortal experience by chance, and my experience with my daughter in the middle of a cold winter night in December taught me more about the plan of salvation than I could have ever learned through stories or lessons. I experienced salvation through my beautiful Rachel. We got up the next morning after an incredibly rough night of sickness and crying children. We did our best to clean the house and prepare our flat for the 16-day holiday in Jersey with the Johns. We already felt like the morning started off roughly when we couldn’t get out of bed until 8:30 a.m. My ride was coming a little after 9 to pick me up for the rental car, and Muffin had blown out her jammies in the moses basket. After a frantic clean up and more preparation, Rachel still wasn’t completely better, and was frustrated about the lack of sleep. We were all pretty irritable, and I had to run out the door and leave Mel to the rest while I picked up our rental.



The guys at Enterprise were great, and made things incredibly easy for me to rent the car and get it all taken care of. I didn’t have any proof of residency by way of mail, so I had to use my American credit card instead of my Lloyds debit. That means the rental money is coming out of my USD in America… Ugh. I got the car and was able to head home, and the moment finally arrived—Driving in the U.K. I put the car into what I thought was first gear and slowly rolled down the driveway and to the street where I would turn left and head up the hill back to the house. Paddy showed me how to put it into reverse, so I was familiar with that, and as I lifted the clutch and added gas to pull into the street, the car was going incredibly slowly. I couldn’t get the speed I needed and I stalled in the middle of the road. I tried it again, and again first gear wouldn’t work. I was smelling clutch burn like crazy, and I had a moment of, “I’m going to break this car and owe insurance on it, and we’re not going to get to Jersey,” but then I tried one last thing. I pushed the stick as far left as I could and up and realized that first gear was WAY over left. I was trying to climb the hill in 3rd. After I got things squared away, I was white-knuckle all the way home. I have a natural pull to the right side of the road, as that’s where I’ve been driving my whole life. I wasn’t far from home, so I was able to get back rather quickly. It was about 10:45 and we weren’t close to being ready to leave. I got out of the car and again smelled the intense clutch burn I had produced, then Mel and I took care of the rest of the packing and sat in the living room prior to leaving.



I remember telling Mel as I started packing the car, “Remind me never to go on holiday again.” True, a bit dramatic, but I was so surprised at not only how two small children affect a holiday, but all the other things that had conspired against us on this specific holiday. We hadn’t left the house and had already hit enough walls to run up the white flag. Mel was the rock this time and we packed up the car and headed on our way. I made an incredible amount of driving mistakes trying to get us to Stonehenge for our mid-point stop, and we hadn’t left our own street. We pulled out of the driveway and went up the road for about 15 seconds before Mel said, “Shouldn’t you be on the left side?” I had no idea I was on the wrong side of the road. We then had made it maybe two minutes before Muffin went nuts. We got stuck in traffic just outside our neighborhood, and pulled over to change Muffin’s nappy. It’s like we were living a sitcom with all the snafus. Once we finally hit the road and started making good time, Rachel started crying. She was incredibly congested, and I’m sure felt like death, and could only moan and wail. It’s understandable when you’re at home and can comfort them and give them little things you know they need and reserve for special sick moments, but when you’re in a car on a day-long trip across the bottom of the U.K., it gets intense. We kept pulling out everything we could to distract or entertain Rachel until finally Muffin had had enough and joined in. We needed to pull over again. We pulled into an old English cemetery grounds and got Rachel out of her carseat. We knew she needed to sleep since she hadn’t the night before, and since we stopped, I went back and adjusted the carseat to tilt Rachel so she was more reclined. It was raining a bit and Muffin was hungry, so we sat in the car while Muffin and Rachel ate a little bit of food. Melanie and I started talking about how people actually go on holiday with little kids. It’s more stressful and anxiety-inducing than most occupational or performance endeavors. We hadn’t gone but 40 miles and we were beginning to question the whole effort. Could we just turn back now? Was it worth all this to go to Jersey? Yeah we had those thoughts, but ultimately we knew we were going through with it.



Once we hit the road again, we pushed through the tears and moaning until we reached the spot our satnav told us to go. (When we were in the driveway back in Edgbaston, we tried to program the satnav to take us to Stonehenge, but it wouldn’t pull it up, so after seven minutes of fiddling, we just picked the location nearest where we thought it was.) When we arrived at the Stonehenge Caravan Lot, we quickly realized we were not, in fact, at Stonehenge. We spent some time looking around, and, not having any cell service, were not able to look it up on our phones through Google maps. We did, however, see a sign posted earlier that said Stonehenge back on the main road, so we went back to the main road and entered Shrewton.



We were only about four miles from Stonehenge as we passed through Shrewton, but Rachel still hadn’t eaten today and Muffin was up for another feed. We tried to push through the last four miles, but both girls were screaming in the back seat and we had to pull over. Muffin fed while Rachel and I went into the neighborhood Co-op to get some lunch. We looked around the store as a distraction to Rachel, and we got a chicken-caesar bacon wrap and some flame-grilled steak crisps. Rachel was very polite to the teller and we sat in the car with Mel and Muffin and ate until we were all done. Rachel only had a few crisps and a ¼ of a PB&H sandwich. Mel and I were getting really worried about her. Her illness had effectively destroyed any appetite Rachel had, and when we forced food down her, she would just hold it in her mouth so we couldn’t put more in. Then she’d refuse to chew and just let it mush up until we were too tired to keep pursuing. She’s left food in her mouth for over 40 minutes before. I wonder where she gets her stubbornness and strong-willed attitude? It’s as if she’s my daughter or something. Sorry for passing that on, Mel.



As we sat in the car eating, I saw the clock and realized it was almost 4 p.m. It gets dark at like 3:45 right now, and we would miss Stonehenge! I made Mel cut short on Muffin’s feeding, and we bolted the last four miles to get to Stonehenge before we couldn’t see it. As we pulled up to the entrance, the giant sign out front said, “Closed” and two people in high-vis jackets were standing in front of a road barricade. We had travelled all this way to see it, and just when we got there, it was too late. Mel and I started laughing to each other—almost a maniacal, a-bit-round-the-bend laugh that neither one knows if the other is laughing or pretending not to cry. It was a moment of parenthood I’ll never forget when Mel and I realized this was our life for the next however many years we have children. The laughter then became legitimate laughter about our situation and what we had experienced to get where we were. After re-routing to our final destination in Poole with the Furbank family, we had another Rachel attack. She was inconsolable and we struggled with her the entire two hours from Stonehenge to Poole. There were stretches of about four to five minutes where I was exerting every ounce of energy I had on driving and not on losing what little remaining patience I had left. Rachel is almost two years old. There’s so much she doesn’t understand or comprehend. She’s in pain, she’s sick and doesn’t know what her body is doing. It’s so hard to remember that when you’re stuck in traffic and so close to your destination. Mel and I both had a rough bout that last hour or so.



When we finally got to the Furbanks, we unloaded the car and I immediately had to return it or I’d get charged another full day. I took it up the road a little ways to the Enterprise and got my reservation all sorted for the return trip. As I walked home I felt a little better about things. We finally made it to Poole, which was the halfway point, and tomorrow we’d be on a ferry where we can walk about and not be stuck in seats. It seemed as though the hardest part was over, until I called Mel to ask her what she wanted for dinner and she told me she’d just fallen down the stairs with Rachel and they were both pretty banged up. Nothing serious or broken, but lots of bumps and bangs—Rachel too. We would have laughed about it, but we used up all our laughter on the earlier things that had gone wrong. This holiday must either be the worst idea ever, one which we never should have undertaken, or Heavenly Father has the most incredible time planned for us which we have to wade through some junk first to get there. I’ll optimistically focus on the latter.



When I got home with my pizza, Rachel was joyfully watching Tangled with Mel and Natalie. She was in great spirits, although she had a large bump on her head from where she fell down the stairs with Mel. We ate and relaxed for about an hour before Natalie left and Mel and I tried to figure out what to do about the ferry ride the next day. As we got online and checked out the information, I realized, suddenly, I had forgotten all our passports. I didn’t have any of them! Thankfully we didn’t need them to go to Jersey, but how in the world did I forget those? We also saw some restrictions on luggage, and some weight limitations. That was when Mel and I realized we hadn’t done any research on our bags. We sat there in silence a bit before Melanie said exactly what I was thinking at the moment. “Maybe we should just pack this whole thing up and go back home. It’s not too late.” Somewhere deep inside, I completely agreed with her. We had been through some ridiculous things so far, and we didn’t need to deal with those things right now. Then, again, at the same time, we both said, “We’ve made it this far. Let’s keep going.” It’s taken me almost 22 pages of journaling and almost 15,000 words to get to the meat of our entire England experience and, more importantly, my overall earthly experience. “I’ve made it this far. Let’s keep going.” How many times in our lives have we encountered issues that challenge us physically, emotionally or mentally, and instead of fighting through to see how far we can go, or how much we can grow, we take the easy way out and say, “It’s too hard. I can’t do it. It’s better if I just give up now.” Today I realized how devastating that thought process could be. What if Melanie and I hadn’t come to England because it was too hard or I thought I couldn’t do it? What if I never married Melanie because I thought it would be too hard to give up the comforts of 20’s bachelorism? What if we never had Alice or Rachel because raising kids is too hard? I don’t use these examples in any way to bring attention to myself, but rather to use them as examples of how each of us had or will have decisions or options for decisions in our life that we may miss out on or intentionally back away from because we’re scared, tired, overwhelmed, or unsure. These are common reasons, they are legimate concerns, but we should never prohibit or postpone learning experiences purely because we won’t pull the trigger, or can’t figure out how to fire the gun.



I anticipate these next two weeks with the Johns will be magical. I bet there are some moments that I reflect on this post precisely because of something that happened on that island. If not, I’ve learned some valuable lessons and I will apply them elsewhere. Either way, I’m now determined to enjoy myself.