Palms, Pelicans, and Puke

We had been driving straight for eight hours—eight hours—all through the night, with a pathetic nap on the side of the road when we couldn’t keep our eyes lubricated—to get to Ilana’s KlezKamp friend in North Carolina so that his toddler brother could meet her toddler brother and sister. It was our only stop on the way down to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We were five minutes away from their house—five minutes. And little Johnny went AAAH!-- and threw up all over his car seat. And then—count to three—AAAH!—and little Charlie threw up all over her car seat. I went AAAH!—and pulled over. I looked back at the two of them covered in puke, turned to Sruli, and busted out laughing. So we spent the first day of our vacation at a local laundromat as I painstakingly stripped down the kids and Sruli painstakingly stripped down the car seats and everything cloth went around and around in the wash. So the babies are sick. Ilana is sick. Sruli is sick. I am not sick, of course, but I am not eating anything (!) prophylactically. Oh, and here in Myrtle Beach is the coldest it’s been in ten years. Yet all in all, not too bad, because the hotel is beautiful, there are loads of palm trees, and we got a suite for insanely cheap (Sruli is a wonder at the internet), there is a ginormous indoor pool complex and the first night I floated down the Lazy River with Johnny on my belly. Today we saw some pelicans on Murrells Inlet—just like in Nemo, Mommy! And, on the way to the pelicans, Sruli stopped for not one—but two—bead shops while the babies watched Barney in the car. He sat right outside the parked car on a bench by the door of the shops, waiting for me, playin’ his bones. Clickety clack clack clack. The ladies in the shops were all tsihitst—what is that sound? Oh—they peeked through the shades—there seems to be a “gentleman” (they are so gosh-darn polite here in the south) doing something unusual right in front of our store. Wait, said I blithely, bead shopping all the while, he will also take a solo on the sheep-dog whistle. Sure enough: Wooo wooo wooo-eee, Clickety, clack, clack, clack. The ladies stared at me. I found some lovely pink stone hearts to make Ilana earrings. Oh yes, I said, not looking up, I married him and had children with him. We are musicians, you know. Tomorrow we plan to go to the Aquarium to see the sharks—just like Nemo, Mommy!—and then a major expense—Pirates Voyage which is like Medieval Times only with Pirates. And meantime, city moms are calling to see if there’s any room left in our Presidents Week Mini-Camp next week. It all seems so far away—this Shabbos, Sruli is the Rabbi again, we have a freylikh Yiddish Dance Day at the JCC and a nice concert in Brooklyn on Sunday. Yesterday on the lazy river, I decided I am finally going to do it— I’m going to St. Petersburg for my big birthday next year. One makes momentous decisions when one is on vacation. Momentous decisions and mundane discoveries, Like sometimes love smells like puke.