Deep Thoughts

By all indications I’m not very deep. I don’t ponder the great questions of the world, the meaning of life, whether E really does equal MC2, or if there is a heaven or hell (actually, I’ve worked in hell, so it does exist; it’s in North Jersey).

Maybe the answers to those weighty questions are better left for the Vatican and the rocket scientists at NASA.

Besides, as a working mom, with a day-to-day agenda that makes launching the space shuttle look like a high school physics project, I simply don’t have the stamina, or bandwidth, to play tag with the great thinkers.

I’m preoccupied with the bigger concerns of life: What’s beyond bed and bath? Why, when you buy a Nabisco product, do they give you a coupon for General Mills? How is it that my 4-year-old has more friends than I do? Or, as summer vacation nears: What size board hit my head to make me believe standing in a line longer than the human genome is a good time? Trust me, there is no oversized, pants-wearing mouse, Sleeping Beauty or cardboard castle worth risking my pale Irish skin to the Orlando sun. And besides I’M THE PARENT, THIS IS MY VACATION TOO, PEOPLE!

When I was a kid my parents’ idea of a vacation began and ended with driving us to the Adirondacks. Once there, my parents would send us off to Camp Go-Find-Something-To-Do because, after all, they were responsible for taking us on vacation but not for entertaining us. While the current Adirondack area has become tony with the rejuvenation of Lake George, this was 1972 B.C. (before cable) so for a “good time” we filled our days searching for spent soda can tabs we could link together to form the world’s largest chain. (Always goal oriented, I was sure we could get into the Guinness World Record’s book.) And, while we were expanding our minds doing this, you could find my parents back at HQ (the picnic table) doing, what appeared to me to be, well, nothing.

Our no-frills trek to the woods certainly wasn’t the Conde Nast Traveler-inspired-bells-and-whistles vacation I take my daughter on these days, but we had a good time and the mountain air (or those afternoon Tom Collins fests) seemed to reinvigorate my parents. (Did I mention that I am one of eight children?)

Anyway, as this year’s vacation plans become top of mind with regular pronouncements from my daughter about her undying need to see the pants-wearing mouse, the pretty-in-pink princesses, and the cardboard castle, I see myself standing in many long lines with the hot sun pounding my face while I apply another layer of sun block with an SPF of 500. It is then I realize I am wrong; hell isn’t in North Jersey it’s in Central Florida and I’m in deep.

Published (and copyrighted) in South Jersey Magazine, Volume 5 Issue 2 (May, 2008).
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Author: Mary Price



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