Parenting: Field Trip
by Joyce Maynard
I
like to say that the one sporting event at which I have excelled in life
is Taking Many Children On Long Distance Trips. Now that they're grown,
they seem to take themselves on these trips, without me. (Which is as
it should be of course.) But back in the old days, we put a lot of miles
on the car together. Here is the story, from 1988, of one particularly
educational excursion. 
It was a no-school day, and I decided to mark the event by taking my three
children (plus one of their friends) on a field trip to the science museum.
I had arisen, before dawn, to make sandwiches and load the car with books,
markers and car games, for the hundred mile trip to the city. I had taken
pains, not only to bring along four ice pops of the same flavor, but also
a damp towel, to wipe the children's hands and faces, after the ice pops.
(The term for this sort of behavior is "perspicatious", and
it applies to nearly every mother I know, whether she knows it or not.)
It didn't matter, that I remembered to put a baggie full of animal crackers in my purse, and another baggie full of peanuts (also two extra strength aspirin), or that (knowing my son Willy's habit of getting lost in crowded places) I had dressed him in a bright red shirt, with his name written on it. I even thought ahead enough that when we got to the museum (and after seeing the long line for tickets to a special Omnimax movie about space flight), I bought my children's regular admittance tickets first and sent them on ahead, inside, to study the exhibits in the supervised Discovery room while I held my place in the long line. Nobody notices, when a mother manages to take care of five hundred and ninety-nine details without a hitch. It's only the one you forget that counts.
In my case, what I had forgotten was that the Discovery room at the science museum is closed for lunch between the hours of twelve and one. So that by the time I got through the movie line, the four children in my care were not (as I had expected) happily enthralled with puzzles, games, magnets and rock specimens, but sitting dejectedly outside the locked Discovery room, holding onto a desperately wriggling Willy by the collar of his shirt.
I had planned to save the robots till later, but everyone was so restless by this time that I decided to march them right over to the main event. (With a fifteen minute delay while Willy and Charlie rode up and down the escalators around twenty times.)
The robot exhibition was so crowded that it was virtually impossible to spot a single robot. We had just managed to successfully jockey our way into position near the front of one particularly popular display (featuring a talking robot that promised to put an end to housework) when Charlie made a soft, but unmistakeably urgent announcement: Mom, I'm about to throw up.
Knowing my son's tendencies along these lines, I had had enough foresight to bring along a Tupperware container and a washrag. But I had left them in the car. So, with no time to waste, I yanked off my daughter Audrey's new purple spring jacket and held it out in front of my son, who promptly made use of it.
Audrey took this surprisingly well. (Managing to mutter, just once, that this had been her favorite jacket.) Meanwhile I rounded up her friend and Willy, and instructed the three of them to sit down in front of a display of filmclips from famous movies featuring robots, while I rushed to the bathroom with my son.
I think ahead, as I have told you. And so (knowing that while the air outside was brisk, this museum is frequently overheated) I had even dressed Charlie that morning in two separate layers: a dinosaur sweatshirt on top, and a short sleeved shirt underneath. The short sleeved shirt was dry, and so, after wrapping up the various other items, that weren't, and stuffing them in my purse, we headed back out into the museum to continue our exploration into the mysteries of science.
Seeing that his brother had taken off his shirt, Willy of course wanted to remove his, only since he did not have a second layer underneath, this left him bare chested. On another day I might have tried to talk him into putting his shirt back on, but on this particular afternoon having a son who now bore a distinct resemblance to Bruce Springsteen seemed like the least of my troubles.
So we forged ahead.
We checked out the sand pendulum and the space capsule. We studied the life sized tyranosaurus rex, went into the lightning chamber, and the planetarium. We rode the escalators some more, and I managed to retrieve Willy just as he was climbing up on the back of a giant model of a bumblebee. Because Charlie's stomach was still touchy, we made frequent trips to the water fountain. At my insistence, we avoided the gift shop. All in all, everything was going well, and we had just half an hour to go before the Omnimax movie we had been waiting for all day.
Then suddenly Willy slipped away from me. I saw him go, even -- but the crowds were so thick that I couldn't stop him, and by the time I broke through, he had disappeared without a trace.
Any parent who has ever lost a child knows the feeling you get, in the pit of your stomach, at a moment like that. Do you run towards the boa constrictor cage -- and risk the possibility that he went in the opposite direction, and is now that much farther away? Do you tell the other children to help look for their brother -- thereby scattering them too -- or tell them to stay where they are and wait? Every second that passes, meanwhile, your child will have covered that much more ground, be that much farther to locate.
There were probably five hundred blond, three year old boys wearing jeans and glow in the dark sneakers at the museum that afternoon. But only one of them was bare chested. And because of that, within a minute somebody had spotted my son (casually studying a model of a perpetual motion machine -- no doubt sensing a bond), and he had been returned to me. He wasn't crying. He had heard his name on the loudspeaker, which amused him. He was planning to find me, he said, as soon as he'd taken a look at the snakes.
So we made it in to the Omnimax movie, which was shown on a seven story high wrap-around screen that made you feel as if you were not simply watching a space flight, but actually taking part in one. Noone threw up, although everyone wanted animal crackers -- which, by this time, had spilled out of their baggie and were crumbled at the bottom of my purse, along with the peanuts, and a whole lot of pennies.
When the movie was over we headed out to our car, whose lights had been left on all day, resulting in a dead battery. On the highway driving home, after the jump start, my children's friend announced that this was the one day all year for an event called Pennance, at his church, in which you confess all of your sins.
"I guess I'll have to try again next year," he sighed, as I handed out the little boxes of juice I had (perspicatiously) brought along.
The children obediently inserted the straws in the juice only of course. Willy squeezed his box, and of course juice was everywhere, and of course it was grape.
RECOMMEND JOYCEMAYNARD.COM TO A FRIEND
