Family Man

by JD

I made an important decision tonight. It may seem like a small one right now, but a little historical perspective makes it feel almost poetic.

We spent the last three days in what is probably my favorite place on the planet: Jackson Hole, Wyoming. We walked through shops and galleries, drove through Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks, saw wild elk, moose, antelope, and pronghorn sheep, watched Old Faithful spew a time or two, and just had an all-around nice vacation. 

It had been eight years since we made it up this way, and I almost forgot how much I love it. The crisp, cool weather and breathtaking surroundings make you feel like your troubles just couldn't quite make the 2,000-foot climb. Of course, some of them did. 

With three little girls five and under, there are a lot of logistics to a trip like this. If you had seen our car with its bulging rooftop carrier and cargo pressed up against the inside of every window, you might have thought we were moving here. It's a good thing we aren't though, because this old western town isn't exactly built for dual-passenger strollers. We've had countless strange looks from the jet-set cowboys and cowgirls who have to walk wide as we lug the contraption up timber stairs and through antler arches. Last time we made this drive, we ended up having a blowout that landed us in the tire center of the Evanston Wal-Mart for the better part of a Sunday afternoon and evening. This time, we've had a whole series of blowouts that required roadside heroics. Luckily the rooftop carrier holds a lot of diapers. 

Eating is another challenge. Taking three road-weary little girls to a public restaurant can be tricky, regardless of the circumstance. On this trip, it has bordered on nuclear. Driving my dad's old Chevy Citation over the Teton Pass in February would cause less of a spike in our collective blood pressure and our chances of making it out alive would be about the same. After the third round of screaming, scurrying, spilling, and enough climbing under the table to spark a spontaneous earthquake drill, we finally waved the white flag and decided to take all meals to-go.

And then there's sleeping. Or, put more accurately, there isn't. As much as it pains us to admit it, our girls just  aren't great sleepers. At home, it's a Festivus miracle if the three of them can string together six consecutive hours on the same night. And everybody knows that taking a poor home team on the road just compounds the problem. Despite our liberal interpretation of the pediatrician's suggestion to treat their colds with occasional Benadryl, we were still watching Julia perform various musical numbers at full volume at 11:15 last night. As I type this at 11:30, Julia and Ella are taking turns waking each other up as I run from bed to bed, replacing pacifiers and trying to contain the madness. 

Julia, who's in my bed tonight, apparently has a miraculous mechanism in her inner ear that forces her to turn her compact little body very gradually until it's perfectly perpendicular to her bunk-mate's -- like a flag flying at half staff (just with the feet of the flag digging mercilessly into the pole's rib cage). Macy can accomplish a similar turn, though she seems most comfortable when both knees have found their way at least a couple of inches into whatever lumbar musculature they can find. I have to assume that the frequent sheet rustling from the other bed and Laura's pained, semi-conscious whimpering have something to do with this phenomenon. 

So here we are, more exhausted and, in some ways, even more stressed out than we were when we left on Thursday. Which brings us to our last trip to Jackson. 

It was eight years ago this week. The weather was similar, but the trip was monumentally different. We booked at the last minute, which was something we could do back then. I had been sworn into the Utah Bar in the morning and we left straight from the induction ceremony with just a couple of backpacks in the car. We stayed in a great resort in Teton Village and had a full condo to ourselves. We slept late every morning, watched who-knows-how-many movies, and ate like royalty. The resort and surrounding area had a collection of spectacular restaurants and we tried most of them. In fact, I think I had my first tastes of elk and bison meat on that trip. We actually had a bit of disposable income at the time, so walking through the shops carried more possibilities than just an embarrassing stroller mishap and a bill for damages. On that trip, we were more like the jet-set and we even looked into things like spa treatments and couples massages.

But there was another thing we did on that trip perhaps more than anything else: we cried. Those few days carry with them some of the worst memories of my life. We were here not because we wanted to get away, but because we had to. We had just lost our third baby and our hearts were genuinely broken. Laura had undergone a gut-wrenching surgery the day before and she was heavily medicated the whole time we were here. We barely spoke throughout the trip and the car was heavy and thick with all the things we weren't saying. Neither of us knew what to do, what to say, or even what to think. We were just sad. So we dropped everything, drove up here to majestic surroundings, checked into a five-star resort, and cried. 

I remember feeling abjectly useless as I saw Laura sitting by a crackling fireplace, wrapped up in a blanket, and staring straight ahead with absolutely nothing behind her eyes. She was clearly in complete physical and emotional anguish and I couldn't find any way to help her. Plus, my heart was broken too. And it hurt.

Fast forward eight years and here we are with three high-energy, snotty-nosed, little angels. The excruciating silence in the car has been replaced by an endless series of high-pitched squeals and "are-we-there-yets." The high-end resort has given way to an overbooked economy cabin. The bison filet and elk burgers are now chicken nuggets and goldfish crackers. This time, we had to forego the gorgeous oil painting and go instead with a plastic moose that shoots foam balls out its nose. And we couldn't be happier about it.

Life is stressful now and rest is hard to come by. The days of decadent vacations complete with hot tubs, plush bath robes, and limitless room service may never return. But each time we've had to stop to change a putrid diaper or fish spilled crayons out of seat crevices, I've thought about last time we were up here and it reminds me of how incredibly blessed we really are.

So, here's my decision: This time, I'm not going back the way we came. Instead, I'm going to drive through Idaho Falls. I know it adds a few miles to the trip, but I have three little girls that will really love Bear World. Plus, considering the memories that we're making on this trip to replace the awful ones from the last one, it just seems appropriate. After all, going home means something completely different now. And I wouldn't trade it for all the chemical peels and chocolate fountains in the world.