My husband and I can’t seem to agree on what qualifies as a vacation.

“I don’t understand why we have to go ten hours away from home,” he said.

“I don’t understand why you want to stay in this state,” I said.

“We’re not the Griswolds, Sara,” he countered.

“I can take a 3-hour daytrip anytime,” I informed him. “We have five days off. I want to have an adventure. I want to go someplace I’ve never been.”

“FINE,” he said. “Just decide what the hell we’re going to do and let me in on it when it’s planned and finished.”

I pouted.

He said, “OH no you don’t. You do NOT get to have your way AND be pissed off about it. Don’t you dare.”

His dad said, “Where do you want to go?”

I said, “Mammoth Cave National Park.”

He said, “Do you know that Missouri is the ‘cave state’?”

I said, “It doesn’t count. We live here.”

He said, “You’re going to drive my son and my grandson ten hours away to see a cave when we have more caves in this state than any other state in the country?”

I said, “You can’t paddle a canoe inside those caves.”

He said, “I’m sure you could if you tried.”

I said, “Those caves are too close to home. Plus, they have a dinosaur park with these huge, life-sized dinosaurs. I think Zion would really like it.”

He said, “We have Elephant Rocks State Park.”

I said, “I’m done talking to you about this. You’ve been telling me for five years to slow down and enjoy the damned journey. The only time I’ve ever been able to do that is when I’m in a car, and now you’re telling me to shorten the journey.”

He said, “My son is a good and patient man.”

Someone needs to take them away from me.

This can only end in tears, sir.

It’s like the news, only worse. Sign of things to come.

There’s a new National Geographic commercial that says, “National Georgraphic is like TV crack!” and I saw it and thought oh, girlfriend.. you have no idea.

Zion was invited to a pool party by one of his former classmates.

Mike lost his mind momentarily and agreed to take him.

I reminded him Saturday morning that it was party day, and he said, “Whew. It’s a good thing I didn’t RSVP for that one.”

“Uhh, yeah you did,” I said.

“Nuh-uh,” he said, “I would never agree to something like that.”

“Michael, you were on the phone with me when I sent the RSVP. I even said ok, you can’t back out now because I sent the RSVP.” He was stuck and he knew it.

So they went to the party. When he came home I said, “How was the party?”

He said, “Sara, these people are crazy. The kid’s mom was telling me all about how they went and bought this alcohol at this liquor store, and they have this card thing where you swipe it and you can drink wine samples. And she was telling me how great this place was and she was all, {he assumed a high-pitched voice here} ‘You and Sara should go have a date night there! There’s wine and cheese and rocks and waterfalls and stuff - it’s beautiful!’”

He was so disgusted here.

“And you know what I thought?” he continued. “I though, ‘yeah, we have somethin’ like that in the hood, too. You pay ‘em enough money and they send you to the back of the liquor store with a styrofoam cup. They got rocks, too, but prolly not the same rocks you’re talkin’ about.”‘

I said, “Please tell me you didn’t talk to the Lee’s Summit moms about the crack problem in the ghetto.”

“No,” he said, “I kept it to myself, but what I really wanted to say through all of this is excuse me, but do I look like a wine-and-cheese-date-night kind of person to you?!?”

I tried to picture it - my black, dreadlocked, extreme-tattooed husband standing at the Lee’s Summit pool on Saturday afternoon with the suburban Catholic school moms, discussing wine and cheese parties.

It made me laugh too.

Tuesday I found myself hanging out on the carpet at Zion’s school, listening to Mrs. Angela read from a book about bath time. After the review {”What’s the first thing we do when we get in the tub, boys and girls?”}, I said, “Ready to go home, buddy?” and Zion hopped up.

My homegirl Ava was sitting on the carpet next to us, and I said, “Did you get to play with Ava today?”

Ava glared at me and Zion said, “No, she didn’t want to play with me today. She played with John Ryan instead.”

“Are you mad at Zion, Ava?”

She glared at me again.

I shot a sideways glance at my son and muttered, “I think she’s mad at me, too.”

They both giggled.

She said, “You’re teasing me.”

I said, “Sure am. Did you have a good day today?”

She stared at me thoughtfully for a minute, and then she said, “Are you Zion’s mom?”

I wondered where this question was coming from. The girl had been at Zion’s birthday party, and I’d walked with her through every school party and field trip for the last nine months. Of course I was Zion’s mom - she knew that.

“Yes,” I said, “I’m his mom.”

She stared at me for a long time, as if she was trying to decide if she wanted to say what was on her mind. Then she said, as if I was the silliest person she’d ever encountered in her four years of life, “You can’t be his mom. You’re different colored.”

Ahhh.

There it was.

I’ve been kind of waiting for this, I suppose, since he was born. Most people in the grocery store don’t say, “Is he yours?” They ask what nationality he is, and expect the story to follow - and of course, I’m more than happy to oblige them. His father is African-American, no he doesn’t look like either of us, yes, we also wondered how he would look after he was born with a black father and a glow-in-the-dark mother.

Usually I’m greeted with surprise - really? African-American? He looks Hispanic or Middle-Eastern! they exclaim. Possibly even Native American, but not African-American!  And by the time we get to this part of the conversation I’ve finally reached the clerk and I say something like, “Well we like him most of the time,” flash a smile, and make my exit.

Not so easy with another four-year-old.

I said, “Remember what color Zion’s dad is, Ava? Zion is the color that happens when someone that’s colored like his dad loves someone colored like me.”

Then she said, “Want to see my debit card?” and I hoped that meant I hadn’t contributed to the delinquency of a future KKK leader.

{it was a pretend debit card, by the way}

It doesn’t seem to matter how hard I try to prepare myself. I don’t answer these questions well. I get stuck between too much information and not enough.

I’ve always been of the “truth” school of thought - as in, if you tell the truth and you educate your children, you’ve done everything you can do to help them.

But child psychology experts tell us that sometimes the best thing to do is ignore the bad stuff. If your three-year-old has thrown himself on the grocery store floor in a fit of rage because you didn’t pick the correct watermelon, instead of beating the ever-loving hell out of him, you should simply ignore the behavior. Acknowledging it proves that he’s gotten your attention, where ignoring it tells him there is absolutely no benefit.

I think about this with race relations. Do I draw attention to the problem? Do I risk creating more of an issue when all I’m trying to do is teach my son something important?

Until recently, I was vaguely aware that “lynching” had something to do with hanging black people from trees. It’s not something I ever gave much thought, and one night in my many internet meanderings, I found myself on a web site dedicated completely to lynchings.

It was maintained by some museum - a “preserve our history so we can learn from it” kind of organization - and featured photographs and postcards of these horrific events.

I read about men who were abducted from their homes, stolen from their wives beds, dragged behind wagons or cars on dirt roads, beaten until they were barely conscious. They were kept conscious, though, because before they could be strung up in trees, the men who abducted them cut off their genitals and stuffed them into their mouths.

If they had been beaten until they were unconscious, they wouldn’t have experienced the full pain and horror of their death.

Finally, almost merifully, a noose was tied and they were hanged, their bodies left swinging sometimes for days as an example of white superiority. All hail the conquering aryans.

I mentioned my new-found education to my husband the next day, reiterating in as much detail as I could stomach what I had learned. I expected shock, horror, at least some disgust; he simply nodded. He knew what lynchings were. In fact, this was something his father and mother would have lived in fear of just 40 years ago. It was certainly a reality his grandparents lived with on a daily basis.

All of this went through my head as I read the story of the Jena 6, the case finally closing today after a long, drawn-out battle. So many mistakes were made, so many things overlooked, so many offenses committed.

You want to judge them. You want to think that you have more control over yourself, your community - we could never end up here. You want to blame the media for stoking the fires of racial tension in this sleepy Louisiana town.

But as I reviewed the entire case, a couple of things caught my attention. The first is a US attorney who commented that in the initial 40 interviews taken in the assault case, no one made any mention of the noose hangings. He concluded that originally, then, the noose hangings had nothing to do with the tension in the community - it was the effect of the media hype.

But I thought about my reaction to the lynching reports I had seen. I thought about my reaction to the lack of justice for so many families - men who either were never brought to trial, or who were found innocent of all charges simply because the jury of their peers didn’t view their actions as crimes. In the best situations, these criminals lived out their lives and were only recently held accountable.

So I didn’t know about these things because I never had to. Lynching was never a part of my life, my mother’s life, or my grandmother’s life. We didn’t live in fear of losing loved ones in the dead of night. The sight of a piece of rope hanging from a tree means little to us.

But whether these black students in Jena - or any other city - realize it consciously or not, I have no doubt that the nooses they saw meant something to them. It may not have surprised them to see it; it may not have inspired instant fear or horror or disgust, but it symbolized something different to them because they were raised with knowledge that my white upper-middle-class suburban upbringing didn’t give me.

And then I realized this US attorney who had declared the whole mess a product of media hype still hadn’t learned anything.  He still wasn’t willing to step outside of his personal bubble and view the world from a different perspective.

Which, I suppose, brings me back to my original point {so very long ago, now}. Is it something I should address? Do I call attention to the issue, and risk hyping it up - making it bigger than it deserves to be?

Do I ignore it and lose a valuable opportunity for my son to learn from history’s mistakes - risk sacrificing the future?

My grandmother said, “This is why we all said marrying a black person was going to suck, Sara. Marriage and parenthood are hard enough without putting the extra weight of the philosophy of race relations on yourself and your family. But you were never one to do anything the easy way.”

I wonder if it’s too late to start…

1. Thank you for your vacation suggestions. It was nice to hear from an old friend, and equally nice to get suggestions from the people I talk to regularly. We’ve now gone from “how are we going to fill up a week” to “is it possible to squeeze in everything we want to do?” I’m feeling a lot better about this vacation thing, even though I’m still very sad about the Badlands {we’re sticking our pennies away for that trip next June}.

2. If you have any suggestions for camping or traveling with a preschooler, I’d like to hear them, too. I’m planning to print some coloring pages - maps of places we’re going, pictures of places we’re going, etc. - for the car ride, and I’m going to bind a book of blank pages so Zion can draw pictures each night of his “favorite part of the day.” Hoping that we can pair it with pictures and he can have a nice scrapbook of his trip. I have some other ideas, too, but I’m open to suggestions. Do you have a tried-and-true method of keeping a kid-let entertained on the journey?

3.  I’m really, really feeling like the entire summer is passing me by. Thrilled that this project for my father-in-law will be finished by Monday - now I can get down to the business of playing with my wee-man. We have lots of cupcakes to make, craft projects to work on, and a whole house to re-arrange.

4. I’m having a hard time blogging lately - things are evening out in my brain, which means a little less creativity. I’ve been doing some creative writing prompts and I may start publishing them on here, just for filler. I’m always open to constructive criticism - note the word “constructive.” I will not accept things like, “You suck, don’t quit your day job,” or “My eyes are bleeding. Please don’t write anymore.”  But if you see something on here and think, ok, what the hell is she talking about? that’s probably what you’re looking at. Just a story.

Edited and added:

5. I can’t post anymore without adding a picture, so I’m sharing a link to a blog I’ve been stalking. Aimee at Artsyville is hugely inspirational - and you know I hate that word, so the fact that I’m using it at all is fairly big - and she rocks the doodle-art thing. She has a way of stating the obvious and making it sound beautiful - artistic - strangely un-drab. I love her insights to her daughter; I love her weekwords; I love her writing style; and mostly, I love her art. I wish I could buy one of each of everything in her etsy, but alas, I am not independently wealthy in any way, shape or form. My favorites:

But I mostly love everything she does. Check her out.

Happy weekend.

Z, looking particularly adorable last night before bed, climbed into my lap.

I said, “Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?”

And he said, “Yes. Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?”

And I said, “Nope. How beautiful?”

And he said, “A MILLION beautiful!”

And I said, “A MILLION beautiful?!? Really? That’s way beautiful.”

And he said, “Especially when you wear dresses.”

I frequently realize - and acknowledge - that my husband surprised most people when he turned out to be an awesome {and willing} father and husband. He wasn’t ever supposed to be a father; at least, that’s what he’ll tell you if you ask. But he more than rose to the occasion and I think about this a lot.

He had a great role model in his own father, another man I have a huge amount of respect for. They are both extremely active participants in my son’s life, and I know that he will be a better person for it, whether he chooses to be a husband, father, uncle, turtle or otherwise.

And usually on this day I would make a grand sweeping gesture to show how appreciative I am of his father-ing skills. I would tell a story about an interaction he had with Zion that demonstrated how awesome he is. I would focus on the dad thing and maybe throw something in about being a good husband as an afterthought.

But today, and most of this week, I have a thought in my head that won’t leave.

Every morning my husband wakes up at 4:45 to go to a job he is - well - let’s say “less than fond of.” He’s humble and grateful to be employed, enjoys his co-workers, and tries not to complain about it, but I know when he comes home in the afternoon exhausted, sweaty and frustrated that this was not a bullet-point in his Life Plan.

For the last four weeks, he has cooked dinner, cleaned the house and taken care of Zion while I’ve been pre-occupied with various tasks and duties. He’s had little to no reward for his efforts, and in fact rarely even gets recognized for this job well-done.

{in other words, he’s turned into a housewife with a separate full-time job that requires manual labor}

In the middle of all of this, he managed to find the time before work Monday morning to write a note to me and attach it to our front door. When I woke up and read this note, it made me smile - and get tingly - because it was full of innuendo and utterly adorable.

But the last line of this letter - that I’ve been repeating in my head for a week now - said, “You are the sexiest woman alive and I can’t wait to come home and see you tonight.”

And I keep asking myself what I could possibly have done to deserve that devotion - how did I find someone who is still excited just to be with me? Just to share the couch while we watch television, or sit next to me in the car even when he would rather gouge his eyeballs out with a spoon than step foot inside that stupid antique store?

“I can’t wait to come home and see you tonight.”

He knows that when he walks in the door at 3pm the house will be in total chaos.

Zion will be completely disrespectful, trying him and testing him at every turn.

He knows that I will have developed some crisis that demands my entire focus, generally forgetting to say hello or kiss him or ask how his day was. Usually he waits patiently until I realize what a terrible wife I am - and when I say, “I’m sorry, I’m a terrible wife,” he smiles slowly and says, “I wasn’t going to say anything, but…”

He does things that need to be done. He helps me. When I fall apart, he picks me up from the floor, puts me back together and sends me to the bookstore to calm down.  Or he hands me the wine bottle. Or both.

He is simply the most amazing man I’ve ever met in my entire life.

I am ridiculously fortunate to know him, to be married to him, to love him, to be the mother of his child, and to be the keeper of his heart.

I’m also really glad he stuck around after I found out I was pregnant, because this would have been so much more of a mess without him.

See this?

{copyrighted photo from here}

And this:

{also copyrighted, from here}

I will not be going to either of these places.

Wanna know why?

Because even though I finally - finally - managed to finagle my two bosses out of two entire days off; and even though Mike managed to talk his boss into three days off; and they’re all happening at the same time; and we already planned the entire trip -

some idiot decided to hold a massive motorcycle rally in the middle of South Dakota during the exact same friggin’ week, and as much as my husband would love a week of debauchery on a Harley Davidson, I think they would take my son away if we participated.

So you know where we’re going now?

{from here}

We’re going to Branson.

Granted, we’re not just going to Branson - we’re also going to Springfield and Sullivan and Jefferson City and St. Louis and maybe - if I get really ambitious - Ste. Genevieve. We’re going to do some driving around the Ozarks and the state of Missouri in general and see just how much trouble we can get into.

But every few minutes I look up from what I’m doing and think to myself, “How in the hell did we go from vacationing in the Badlands and Black Hills of South Dakota to Branson, Missouri?” and I die a little inside.

Zion will enjoy Silver Dollar City, though, right?

RIGHT?

Please tell me he will, because if he doesn’t, I have to re-think this whole mess.

Anyway, if anyone has any suggestions for “cheap” and “fun” in this context, I would appreciate input. I’m kind of at a loss for a) traveling to Branson (not exactly my cup of tea if you didn’t already know - no offense to those of you who dig it) and b) traveling with a preschooler (we haven’t had the balls to attempt this yet).

Mike wants to ride Go-Karts. That is all.

Is anyone else completely ashamed of themselves because the first thing they thought when they saw the headline, “Robert Pattinson Hit by Taxicab” was, “OH CRAP! He’s going to DIE before they finish filming the Twilight movies!”

No? Just me?

Just wondering if I’d have any company in hell..

The freak-out fairy has taken a vacation {I’m hoping it’s more of a permanent leave of absence} and against my better judgment, I decided it was a good day for a movie.

Zion’s first movie.

Actually, the deciding factor was Zion waking up, realizing we slept through the first half of school and wailing, “MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMY! WE SLEPT THROUGH SCHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!”

The delusional half-asleep side of me covered my head with a pillow and mumbled, “It’s ok! We’ll think of something fun to do today! How bout if we go to a movie?”

It worked, and we headed to Lee’s Summit to see Up!

First we hit Target for candy cause, hello, I’m not about to pay movie theater prices for that, right? So we grabbed gummy bears, gummy worms, Mike & Ike’s, Dots, and Milk Duds, and we each got a drink. I crammed all of that in my massive purse and wondered about search and seizure laws - could they make me hand over my purse if it was crackling and rattling like a pharmacy?

The next dilemma came when I explained that we couldn’t tell anyone at the movie theater that we had this stuff in there. No Zion, lying is bad, but it’s ok when you’re trying to sneak store-bought candy into the movies. I’m going straight to hell, right?

We reviewed the rules in the car - no loud talking, whispering only, stay in your seat, no kicking the seats in front of you, popcorn ONLY from the concession counter, and go to the bathroom before you sit down cause we’re damn sure not leaving in the middle of that expensive-ass movie.

We managed to get into the theater without getting arrested or otherwise harassed {the bags were crackling with every step - I swear everyone in that entire building could hear it}, found our theater and got seated when Zion said, “HEY! What about popcorn?” Oh dear lord.

We picked up the bag, put everything back inside and headed to the concession stand - then back to our seats. Got everything settled when he said, “Mommy! We forgot to go to the bathroom!” Where is this kid’s memory coming from?!?

The movie finally started. It was hysterically funny - for the record, I’m almost positive everyone in the world needs to see this movie. It was that good. Especially those of us who are big fans of road trips and strange adventures.

About halfway through, Zion started saying, “When is it going to be ohhhhh-ver? Can I play a game? Can I go potty? Can we leave and come back later?” We made it, though, and it was worth it.

Afterward, we went to see Nonnie and Gina. Zion had a lovely time exploring the garage and playing blocks and trucks, and then we all decided that Chinese food sounded good and we were off to meet Daddy at the buffet.

Sometime around the middle of our late lunch/early dinner, Zion realized that he hadn’t told Daddy all about our special day.

{insert ominous music here}

“Daddy,” he said, “guess where Mommy and I went today!”

I almost choked on my cashew chicken and the panic welled in my chest.

“Where’d you go, son?”

“Mommy took me to the movies -”

This was where I started frantically waving my arms back and forth and vigorously shaking my head while I mouthed “NO!” as loudly as I could without actually making a sound.

Aunt Gina turned a lovely shade of purple beside me and did her best not to choke on her beef and mushrooms.

Zion looked bewildered and did his best to play along.

“She took you to the movies, huh?” Daddy prompted helpfully.

“Yeeeeess,” Zion continued cautiously, and then quickly corrected himself. “I mean, no. No.” This was definitive. “We didn’t go to the movies, we just saw a movie.”

Aunt Gina was making gurgling noises beside me - I was sure she was strangling on that freaking beef and mushrooms.

Daddy said, “Oh.. what movie did you see?”

I was still waving my arms and shaking my head, and the poor child thought for the longest 15 seconds of his life before he threw in the towel.

“It was a movie called, ‘Up’. Mommy forgot to take me to the bathroom even though it’s part of the rules, and we had popcorn.”

“That’s nice. So Zion, how was school today,” Daddy went on.

ACK. The arm waving and silent screaming started all over again, and beside me, Aunt Gina was waving for anyone who could perform the Heimlich Maneuver.

“We slept through school today, Daddy,” my little tattle-tale gleefully informed his father.

I gave up. My fork found its final resting place on the side of my plate, and my head found its final resting place in my hands. And then, the sound of my doom:

“I have to go potty.”

Daddy, doing his best Cheshire Cat impersonation, said, “Come on, Zion, I’ll take you to the bathroom and you can tell me about the rest of your day.”

As they stood up, Aunt Gina apparently found the will to swallow and said, “At least he didn’t mention the $20 you spent on candy at Target!”

She’s so helpful.