It was Friday night, two days before our road trip to Canada, when Hunter looked through the file containing our ID documents. I had been preparing all week for the trip by cleaning the house as if the queen of England was arriving for tea the following day, catching up on laundry, and preparing food so that we wouldn’t need to live off Mcdonalds and gas station snacks, much to my children’s chagrin; Hunter prepared by working 12+ hour days to finish non negotiable deadlines at work. Needless to say, we were both very much looking forward to our upcoming vacation. Technically the drive could be accomplished in a day since it was *only* 10 hours away, however after factoring in four little kids, we figured it would take closer to 15 hours, and not to mention shave years off of mine and Hunter’s life.
“Wait a minute, where are Joy and Ezra’s birth certificates?” Hunter looked at me with slight panic in his eyes.
“I don’t know, they should be there. Are they not there?” I replied.
Calm searching turned into frantic hasty glances of all the papers ever to exist in our household; we discovered that, unbeknownst to us, we did not actually own two of our children.
So 2/4 or 50%, not exactly a passing grade.
We had each gone through our filing cabinet multiple times so we knew the papers weren’t there, which then begged the question, can we get birth certificates by Sunday? To which we discovered the answer, absolutely not. Devastated, we resigned ourselves to our fate, we would not all be going to Canada to see the eclipse. Some of us would be Left Behind, not quite as bad as being left behind post rapture, but worse than that one time my parents left me behind at church.
I called my mom, partly because I wanted to tell someone the inconceivable news, to lament over what terrible parents we were to not own our children legally, and to maybe, cry a little. At this point I figured I would stay behind until I got the birth certificates, then join Hunter and Parker immediately after visiting the office of Vital Records. I know, foolishly ambitious of me to think I could drive 10 hours solo parenting a 5 year old, 3 year old, and 18 month old. Equally foolish, assuming I would be in and out of the Vital Records office as quickly as the Chick-fil-a drive thru line. But as you can tell, we don’t plan well, we just let things sort of smack us in the face violently before realizing a plan would have prevented the injury.
“Mom, we don’t have Ezra and Joy’s birth certificates” I told her over the phone.
“Oh that’s perfect! Parker is old enough to remember the Eclipse and Helen is too young to be Left Behind. I can watch Ezra and Joy while y’all are gone.” she said.
Woah, this idea was not terribly far from my mind, but it seemed too good to be true. However she offered before I had even thought to ask. Hunter and I hesitated, still in the denial stage of grief, hoping to not break up the family for a family vacation. We said we would pray about it, slightly brazen of us considering our options were quite limited and our family would have to break up in order for anyone to go.
In the end, we decided to leave the middles with my parents for six days while we vacationed in Dunnsville, Canada to see the Eclipse. The next morning, I strategically took Joy out to Chick-fil-a for breakfast and presented the news to her as optimistically as possible which was pretty easy since 5 year olds aren’t typically aware of what the future holds anyway and the Canada vacation still seemed in the distant future to her, despite it being only one day away. I knew that if Joy could get on board with the new plans, she would be able to convince Ezra likewise since he basically does everything Joy tells him to, occasionally rebelling when he finds the mere gaze of Joy to be offensive.
That night, we had dinner at my parent’s house, got the middles settled, and left them there for six days; the longest we’ve ever left any of our kids. We packed for our trip late into the night, knowing full well we would have to wake up at 4:30 to leave at 5am; motivated to leave that early by frequent warnings from friends and family of the terrible traffic we were likely to encounter since Niagara Falls had issued a State of Emergency due to the influx of people traveling to see the Eclipse; friends and family that knew Hunter and I probably weren’t doing a great job of planning in the traffic since we don’t, you know, PLAN.
Crawling into bed at midnight, 4:30am came much too quickly, (but when does 4:30am NOT come too quickly?), but we got up, got Parker and Helen in the car and headed off for a great vacation to Canada to see the Total Eclipse and Niagara Falls. Helen was even more excited but not in the giddy, happy sort of way, but in a weeping and gnashing of teeth sort of way.
“I can’t believe we had to leave Ezra and Joy behind. I wonder how they slept…better yet, I wonder how my mom slept”
“Yeah, I can’t believe we didn’t have their birth certificates,” Hunter replied to me.
“Wait…did you ever grab OUR passports and Parker and Helen’s birth certificates?” I said, sure my responsible husband would say yes, of course babe, I got you.
“no…did you?”
With those dreaded words that literally changed the course of our trip, we turned the car around, adding an additional 1.5 hours drive time, which felt multiplied since Helen cried the whole time. However we were extremely grateful that we didn’t spend more time in the car before realizing our mistake. And if Helen hadn’t been crying we probably might have laughed at the irony, but we haven’t yet and I don’t know when we will. I’ll keep you posted.
While we were sad to leave behind two of our kids, it worked out beautifully. The car ride was difficult enough with a weepy 18 month old, however ear plugs and audio books came in clutch, and exploring the busy city of Toronto was a lot easier than it would have been with a 3 year old and a 5 year old. Still, Hunter and I try to keep the family together, to pick vacations that cater to the lowest denominator, which constantly changes since you never know who will have an emotional breakdown, it could be the 3 year old, the 18 month old, or even the 30 year old because of the previously mentioned 18 month old.
And before you ask, we did in fact order the birth certificates so that next time we go to Canada we won’t have a proper excuse for leaving them behind. However, we might need to wait until the lowest denominator can put on their own shoes.
Amateur Motherhood 