For a moment I flashed on an image of Peter, Peik, and Truman, saddling up horses and riding out into the wilderness, with no mice for miles. Or at least, no mice wearing shoes. I could almost smell the pot of beans simmering over the open campfire. Ah, simplicity. Oh, food.
Food is absolutely everywhere. You can’t take a mousekastep without running into a restaurant of some kind. Care to visit Goofy’s Galley? Maybe Pluto’s Dog House? (Who would eat the food in a doghouse, I ask you?) Or perhaps Pinocchio’s Pizzeria? The pool deck is surrounded by mini themed food stands. My kids, who are normally not big eaters, were instantly overwhelmed by the lure of “free food.”
“You mean we can have anything on the menu, for free?” Pierson grinned. He was mesmerized by the variety and the ease with which everything appeared. You just walked up to the counter and asked. No negotiations, no exchange of money. The pancakes, naturally, were mouse-shaped. The French toast was seared with the brand of Mickey. Even the ketchup was rendered onto the plate in three round squirts: one big, two smaller on top. Mouse.
On day two, the novelty had not yet worn off. I watched Larson pull himself out of the ear part of the pool, skitter over to a fake grass hut, order a burger with fries, and deliver it to our poolside table, giggling deliriously. He had no intention of eating it; he’d gotten it just because he could. No parental involvement necessary. Ten minutes later, he went back and ordered a hot dog, to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. Nearby, the lure of self-serve soft- serve ice cream nearly undid Pierson, who by the end of the afternoon had stood in line countless times to concoct yet another version of Freudian Fantasia. Not to be outdone by himself, he also managed to mix about fifteen different “all new” soda flavors from the easy-access nozzles. How about a Pink Lemonade–Fruit Punch-Cola with a dash of Sprite this time? He brought each to me the way a cat brings a dead mouse to the door—with pride and insistence that I acknowledge how precious my son’s ability to jerk soda had become. So much for “Drop your kids off and have some quiet time by the pool.” I was only ever able to drop Finn anywhere, as Larson and Pierson required my attentive response to each and every new discovery. At least I got some quality time with Cleo, bonding with her over the absurdity of her little brothers.
“Why do they do that?” I asked her, after one of the boys almost fell into the pool while trying to avoid some costumed character. Other kids went up to Cinderella or Snow White as if approaching celebrities, holding out little books to collect all the various autographs.
“Two reasons,” Cleo observed. “One, they are boys. They have never seen any of the girl movies, and Disney these days is mostly for girls, except for Nemo, and it would freak a kid out to see a full-size Nemo, out of water. Second, you have nothing but disdain for sugar-coated fantasy. You have created them in your own image.”
“That is not true,” I said, but Cleo was right. I like my fantasy dark and brooding, draped in cobwebs and with skeletons popping up out of it. So do my boys. Without trying to, I had trained them to mistrust good and to embrace the darker side of things. Was that so bad? “I’ll prove it to you, I’m going to take them on this ‘Private Island’ tour—see?” I pointed to a very Jim Jones–ish stop on the cruise, where you are actually let off the ship and encouraged to explore palm trees and a fiberglass pirate vessel anchored offshore. “They will love this.”
Cleo rolled her eyes.
“I will love this,” I retorted.
I hated it. But I tried not to show it. I strapped on my lowest-heel espadrilles and gamely herded the boys off the boat and onto the shore, overriding their lazy complaints about how they just wanted to stay by the pool and make more ice cream and sodas—maybe even ice cream floats! What might chocolate and Sprite taste like together? They had to know! Luckily, there was more free food on the beach, and even an actual bar with actual booze so I could wrap a warm fuzzy blanket of alcohol around my mouse-numbed brain.
The last day I did try to get all the kids to go to mousetivities, but by the afternoon we were all back by the pool, once again being regaled with looping Disney cartoons on the JumboTron (or was that DumboTron? It honestly might have been) overhead. Children with lesser fortitude might have caved, but after three days mine had had enough magic and dreams come true. “Mom, I want to go home,” Pierson said, drawing a tear of pride from my eye.
Once off the ship at eight A.M., we were all raring to get those two plane trips out of the way and be back home in time for an early dinner and a couple of episodes of
We finally boarded at seven, then sat on the runway for forty minutes. Somehow the shuffling around had resulted in the four of us being upgraded to first class. The extra leg room was nice, but first-class passengers have a heightened level of expectations and no one wanted to be in the vicinity of two exhausted, whining boys and a toddler with poop in his diaper.
Shortly after takeoff, the exhausted boys all fell asleep, and I was able to enjoy a quiet meal of airplane food, which is exactly the quality of food to which I had grown accustomed. The angelic faces around me were certainly a blessing, at least until they became a curse as I tried to get them all and our luggage from La Guardia to Manhattan at eleven P.M.
However I did it, I was pleased to put them all to bed that night in a mouse-free environment—no origami- animal-shaped towels, no mouse chocolates on the pillows. I still had two days to go until the big boys returned from the dude ranch, but who cared, really? I had survived a vacation with four of my children, and now I never had to do that again. Or at least not until Fox makes a cruise on which Lois and Petah are at the captain’s table, seated next to Marge and Homer, and Finn can run wild with the likes of Maggie, Stewie, and Brian. Perhaps I’ll send Peter on that cruise with the kids. I will stay here in New York and go on my own safari to bag the big five: Bergdorf’s, Bloomingdale’s, Barneys, Bendel’s, and Saks.
HOLIDAZE
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