18 January 2005
Marybeth
When Carrie and Luke were younger, I started taking them on vacations during spring break, trips in which our agenda wasn’t constrained by the napping and attention needs of the younger kids. The first time, when Carrie was in fourth grade and Luke was in seventh, we went to Boston, where Uncle Peter was still working on the everlasting college degree. We walked the Freedom Trail, watched street performers at Fanueil Hall, and drove out to Plymouth Plantation, where Luke and Carrie tried to trip up the costumed historical interpreters with modern references and artifacts. We had dinner with Peter and his friends, and went to an authentic wharf lobster house for their first experiences with whole, couldn’t-be-fresher lobsters. Luke and I decided to share one of the two double beds in our motel room because Carrie was a bundle of comatose energy as she slept—stealing covers, thwacking her partner with a forearm, or squirming into a perpendicular position—depriving her bed partner of any peace at all.
Two years later, we went to New York City. Again, we walked and walked, rode the ferry and visited the Statue of Liberty, ate hot dogs and pretzels from street vendors, rode to the top pf the Empire State building, and had lunch at the Plaza with our friend Roger, Carrie’s godfather. We met up with Luke’s friend Mike and his parents at South Seaport and walked through Wall Street to the World Trade Center. The thing they loved best was seeing Broadway shows. I’d pre-purchased tickets to A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and as we waited in line on 42nd Street, we studied the posters plastered to the sides of the theater. Carrie gasped as she recognized some of the stars of the show and she said, with high drama, “I’m going to be …in the same building…as Whoopie Goldberg?!” The show exceeded her expectations, as our seats were very good and she was just feet from this Movie Star she knew from Sister Act. On our final night, the decision to see another show instead of eating in a fancy restaurant was unanimous—and we saw Sarah Jessica Parker as Fred in Once upon a Mattress, a show that Carrie helped direct for Regina just a few years later.
Two more years elapsed and Luke had a different spring break than the other kids, so it was Scott and Carrie and I off to Washington, DC. We spent lots of time with Aunt Louisa and her new baby Alec, were escorted by my friend Michelle through the Library of Congress and the “secret” tunnels that connect the buildings on Capital Hill, and spent time in Annapolis with our friends the Roeders. Of course Mimi knew just the shop for the perfect 8th grade graduation dress! The highlight was the afternoon Carrie and I spent at the Holocaust Museum, where the solemn weight of suffering profoundly touched Carrie in a way our trip to Dachau a year earlier had not.
These trips were very special and I am grateful I had the chance to rediscover beloved places with my children.