Fear Factor

June 25, 2008

Filed in: Alaska, The Home Front, The Middle Ages

I’m not really thinking of what’s happening tomorrow morning as a vacation. Adventure, yes. Trip-of-a-lifetime, yes. But vacation?

To our little family, vacation means plunking down a hunk of money for a house somewhere nice, then parking our butts in front of whatever nicest body of water is close by.

If you’re one of the parents of this group, you read till you start to get a slight headache, at which point you take a little swim, after which you think you might be hungry so you wander back up to the house and eat a bit of this and that from the fridge, during which time you realize you’re feeling a little woozy from all your time in the sun and it really would be best if you snuck off for a quick nap, after which you look up at the sky and wonder if the sun hasn’t crossed the yardarm and if it isn’t in fact time for happy hour.

That’s vacation. What we’re doing starting tomorrow is thrilling, exciting, complicated, and expensive, but no, not vacation.

It is odd to be taking a trip with a little pile of fears also waiting to be packed, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit there are a few anxieties floating freely through the sparkly air of Swellville this morning:

Some of us are worried we’ll be attacked by bears on our flightseeing trip next Friday.

Some of us are afraid of the 5-seater plane that takes us to the bears, the one that lands on the hard-packed sands during low tide (yeah, that’s right, there’s no asphalt at all). 

Some of us are worried we’re not up to kayaking around the glacial ponds or lakes or whatever they are. We know what it feels like to be paddling and paddling but not really getting anywhere, how suddenly far away the rest of the group can appear, how alone we can feel in our boat, our arms tired. Some of us are thinking about that.

Some of us are wondering just how much experience our guides have and how good they are at fetching medical assistance from the mainland if we need it. We’re out of 911 territory for at least three of the days; if that bear gets you, it’s 45 minutes minimum for some kind of airborne triage to get to you.

Some of us are worried about money.

Some of us—okay, the one who has already pretty much given up sleeping—is wondering if, spending 10 nights in a row with her entire family in the same room—she is going to sleep at all, a single wink, and if not, how will she be able to run from bears, save her children from kayak mishaps, and earn enough money to keep us from debtor’s prison.

Some of us are worried that one child, the one with the great big personality, will react to becoming untethered from his peer group for so long by idly attacking, berating, picking on, criticizing and generally bullying the other one, the one with the Buddha personality. 

Some of us are worried that the tween in our group, who can sometimes be exquisitely sensitive and murderously intolerant of, say, teen brothers singing emo songs along to their iPods really loudly, will in fact be exquisitely sensitive and murderously intolerant the entire trip.

Some of us are wondering if the weird fear that’s been creeping up on us for a couple of years now, the thing that started out being about bridges, but is now about bridges and on-ramps and highways in general. That thing. Some of us are wondering how bad that thing will be and how much of the crazy mountainous 2-lane driving we’ll be able to handle.

Some of us are wondering if the body parts that have been bothering us—necks, backs, knees, that stuff—will act up while we’re trying to hike or kayak or beachcomb or run away from bears.

Some of us are wondering if this whole 50th State business isn’t just spoiled middle-aged indulgence that’s never going to amount to anything other than a pile of debt and a bunch of memories. (Heh, that’s a pretty good description of middle-class American life, pile of debt, bunch of memories.)

There is one more fear, but it’s private so I’m not going to write down here. (This may seem to be one of those blogs where I let it all hang out, but in reality I’m an uptight New Englander, and even uptight New Englanders with blogs keep things pretty buttoned-up.)

Also there’s the worry about the dog and the kennel and the constipation, but nobody needs to read about that either. Ew.