It never fails. Ever since this family became a family of more than two, February has been the month of illness. Some years are worse than others. One year there were fevers and vomiting that made the rounds from one to the next for weeks. Another year there was chicken pox. Last year I believe it was a mild version of the swine flu: fevers for all! Hooray! And always these ailments are sandwiched by colds, runny and stuffy noses which are invariably wiped on me, coughs, sneezes and whining all around.
So when Paulo suggested that we take our first weekend vacation without the kids in February, I cringed a little inside. He was ecstatic. He found a Bed and Breakfast on the seacoast that would serve gluten-free breakfasts, a variety of gluten-free restaurants in the area, a good place for drinks in Portland and someplace to shoot pool, too. My brother and his girlfriend agreed to watch my parents' dog for that weekend. We made a month-long training plan with my parents to help Ellie adjust to the idea of having someone other than Mommy or Daddy put her to bed: something that had never happened in her three-and-a-half years of life.
And I prayed. Hard. I pumped the kids full of their vitamins and probiotics. I washed their hands, and mine, religiously. I enforced bedtimes like a Nazi and bundled them head-to-toe just in case. If there was anything that almost 8 years of parenting had taught me it was not to allow myself to expect anything to go the way I hoped it would. In fact, expectations in general should be kept low if there was to be any chance of avoiding massive disappointment. As far as I could tell, planning a vacation away in February was courting disaster. It was like dancing on a golf course during a storm waving your 20' metal club overhead. Or parking your new Mercedes in a bad neighborhood, leaving your purse and laptop on the front seat, keys in the ignition and walking away with the windows down. Sure, there's a chance that nothing bad will happen, but you shouldn't be surprised if tragedy strikes.
Every day that passed in February without illness was a little gift. Then, halfway through, Ellie came down with pink eye. The eye itself wasn't that bad, but she slept poorly for a week and keeping her from wiping the stuff around was next to impossible. Still, she improved steadily as we approached our departure date. Then, on Tuesday before we were to leave, Spencer woke up with the goop-eye. More eye drops were ordered and we soldiered on. He was still feeling pretty well, and she was finally sleeping again. I almost dared to hope: we were so close!
Friday was go-day, and I went to bed Thursday night with packing on the brain. During the night I dreamed that I was hearing children's voices and footsteps in the hall. Friday morning it became clear that I hadn't been dreaming. Spencer had been up all night with a raging fever, and he was a gibbering mess. His ears hurt and the thermometer read 102.5. Paulo ran out to get some groceries and while he was gone, Spencer threw up Ginger Ale. Tragedy had struck after all.
I called my mom to put her on alert. She generously offered to watch them, sick and all, but informed me that my brother had also fallen sick with a stomach bug and they weren't sure what to do with their aging, blind, deaf dog. Right. OK, it wasn't looking like that was going to be an issue, but I thanked her and asked her to wait until later in the day so we could decide what to do. Then I called the doctor and got an appointment set up.
With a little coaxing, I got Spencer to nurse down (and keep down) a dose of Ibuprofen to take the edge off the pain and knock down the fever. He was crying and hanging on to me, begging me to hold him and not to go. I could smell my hopes for the weekend smoldering. There was no way I could leave such a sick child without his parents. This was nothing my parents couldn't handle, but a sick child wants mommy and daddy, and I couldn't deprive him of that. When Paulo came home he was thinking the same thing: if Spencer got to the point that day that he was happy to have Nana and Grampa take care of him, we would go. If not, we would stay until at least the next morning to give the antibiotic a chance to help him.
Not surprisingly, the doctor confirmed that he had a raging ear infection in his right ear, and a moderate infection in the left. We brought him home with antibiotics and (after almost a half an hour of trying to make him understand that they didn't go into his ear but into his mouth) he finally took his first dose and went to sleep. Miraculously, he pulled out of his nosedive after a long afternoon nap and he decided that he'd love to have his grandparents take care of him for the weekend after all, and that we should go. A whirlwind of packing and linen-changing followed as we tried to get ready to go.
"How fancy is the place we're going for dinner tomorrow?" I asked. "A little, but not too fancy. Come see - there are pictures of the dining room on their site." Paulo pulled up the website of the gluten-free restaurant he'd found around the corner from our inn. "What about that?" I asked, pointing to the sidebar. Big red letters announced that the restaurant would be Closed for 6 weeks starting February 15th. Right. So much for that perfectly planned meal. At least we were still going!
Meanwhile, while we were rushing about, tossing toiletries in bags and changing sheets, my parents were shoveling out their driveway, packing their things, and battling their way through the snowstorm to our house, old dog in tow, so that we could get away before it got too late.
Yes, that's right, there was a snowstorm too. Did I fail to mention that? That's probably because the sick kid had taken my mind off the atrocious weather but now we were getting ready to set out into the storm for a two hour drive north. Following right along with the snow. Naturally.
By the time we kissed the kids and parents good-bye and set out it was past dinner time and I was famished. I'm pretty sure that my anxiety about Spencer and our plans had made me forget lunch entirely. My stomach was a churning knot of worry and conflicted feelings - wanting to have this time with Paulo and yet feeling guilty for leaving things the way they were at home - and feeling down-right weepy and sick, which is not the way anyone wants to start vacation.
We decided to stop for dinner first at a local place we knew had a gluten free menu and decent steaks. We pulled off the highway and plowed through the slushy streets to their parking lot only to find that they were closed up. Out of business, thank-you-very-much. Yes, we probably should have seen that coming.
Our first spot of luck (other than the departure itself) came at dinner when my brother and his girlfriend were unexpectedly able to join us, at least as company. My brother was still recovering from that nasty stomach bug I mentioned earlier and wasn't up to eating yet. But they sat with us and laughed at our tale. We had a decent meal, I had a stiff drink, and we started to hope we'd gotten past the worst of it.
Then it was off into the snowy north to try to find the B & B. We weren't going to arrive until at least 10pm, so we had instructions as to how to let ourselves in and find our room, and as we drove slowly down long, dark, lonely snow-covered stretches of road without so much as a sign, street-light, house or side street it started to feel like the opening scene in a Stephen King movie. We joked about the darkened inn at the end of the road on a stormy night - it was all a bit surreal.
Of course, the inn was anything but forbidding. It was lovely. Paulo had booked us a two-room suite with a fireplace, and the whole thing was incredibly charming. In spite of the chaotic day it was hard not to feel we'd finally escaped to a better place...
He'd had them order Birds of Paradise for the room: the flowers we'd had in the room on our honeymoon.
I loved this sink with it's brass fixtures and stone surround, especially since I didn't have to polish the brass!
What a wonderful bed!
And of course the fireplace: the perfect place to end the day.
I wish I could tell you that I slept long and hard that first night, but that wouldn't be quite true. We were both fighting a bit of a cold, and my throat was sore. I couldn't stop my mind from wandering home and wondering how Spencer was feeling, and whether or not Ellie was sleeping through the night for Mom and Dad. I pushed the thoughts away again and again, but I never fully settled my mind.
In the morning I called home to check in. Everything had gone as well as I could have hoped, and I could relax. Which I did. After long, scalding hot showers (which I loved), we made our way down the flying staircase to the dining room for our first breakfast.
Lovely, no?
We met our hosts for the first time, and settled in to chat while waiting for the other guests to come down for breakfast. Eventually, two other couples joined us and the inn keeper shared a story about a prank they'd played on one of their residents recently involving a new table they'd ordered. We all laughed and then they brought out the gingerbread pancakes - perfect and piping hot. "Gluten free," she said as she put mine down, "And gluten for you," she said putting Paulo's down. We all laughed again and Paulo quipped that he wanted a new table, to more laughs.
Only we shouldn't have been laughing. They'd genuinely made a mistake and gave Paulo four beautiful, gluten-filled pancakes. When we all realized the error our hosts were mortified and we couldn't believe our luck. After all Paulo's careful planning, we were starting our one day away with a heaping helping of gluten, and left waiting to see how long before he passed out in a profound "gluten coma" as he's begun to call it.
Interjection from Paulo: OK, so it may sound insane that I actually ate those pancakes after the inn-keeper explicitly said they were "gluten", but keep in mind I had spoken to them multiple times prior to our visit, specifically about our dietary restrictions. I had told them I had Celiac Disease. We had exchanged e-mails leading up to that weekend discussing the gluten-free options. And the "regular" pancakes looked exactly like the gf ones (i.e., not fluffy). And we were talking about practical jokes on the guests right before they served us! So I was 100% completely convinced it was a joke, and my response (I thought) clearly indicated as much. Guess not. This was a mis-communication of monumental proportions. On the bright side, I had been wondering what would happen to me if I were to be "glutenized" beyond a cross-contamination, and that question was answered to some extent. I ended up being sick for two weeks after this -- a couple of days of on-and-off "gluten coma" followed by non-stop colds and coughs and sore throats, topped off by catching the kids' pink-eye. I strongly suspect the length and severity of this series of illnesses were a direct result of my immune system being compromised by the Pancakes of Doom. I guess we'll never know for sure, and I'm certainly not going to experiment any further.
In an attempt to make the most of the day, he courageously loaded up on caffeine and we headed out. His plan: to stay vertical and moving with constant caffeine until the real sick hit, and since we he'd never been knowingly glutinized before, we had no idea how long we had.
For our first stop, we went to visit the home my father grew up in. It was a short hop away and I hadn't been back to see the place since my grandparents passed away. It was easy to find and to my surprise, when I knocked on the door to ask the owners' permission to walk through the yard, they invited us to come in and look around. So much was the same that I was astounded, and honestly thrilled. It was a grand old house with lots of history: part of it was once a church, a meeting house, and a ship had been built in what was now the living room at some point. It had been moved from it's original location close to the shore to its current location before my grandparents bought it, and when the current owners had started to remove the wallpaper in the living room they'd discovered valuable antique stenciling on the walls that had been done by a renowned local artist--matching stencils were even on display at one of the local historical museums.
We thanked the owners after our tour and headed down town for hats and gloves which, somehow, we had forgotten to pack. Of course, it was February in a tourist town, so everywhere we looked we encountered "Thanks So Much! See You next Season!" signs cheerily posted in windows and on doors. Luckily, we were able to find one open store with a couple of hats left, and a candy shop where we scooped up ten flavors of fudge and some salt water taffy to bring home to the troops.
After that we somehow managed to squeeze in a run to Target for some Starbucks, which we sat and drank in relaxation thank-you-very-much, while watching other parents with children who seemed like strange little aliens. None of them were screaming in agony because their parents stopped moving the shopping cart for a fraction of a second, or trying to climb their parents like a rock cliff, or asking the same question over-and-over-and-over, or talking non-stop to the strange adult behind them in line about princesses or superheros....where did these kids come from? Oh, right. The land of the neurotypicals. I don't usually have the luxury of watching other people's kids because I'm too busy managing my own hoard of barbarians. It was peaceful to stand on the outside.
Then it was off to explore the local Historical Museum before they closed, lunch by the river in a pub Paulo had found with a GF menu, and then back to the inn to change before heading to a local stable to inquire about taking a horse-drawn sleigh ride. If we wanted a ride on our own, instead of in the 4:00 group, we had some time to kill, so we decided to head to the shore. It couldn't be too far to a beach of some sort, so we hooked up the GPS, looked for where the water was on the map, and headed in that direction.
Sure enough, after 20 minutes or so we found Goose Rocks beach. We parked in the nearest snowbank, bundled ourselves up, and headed out to see the water. The beach was deserted. Footprints indicated others had been there that day, but at the moment we were the only humans as far as the eye could see. There were, however, several Canadian Geese, a few seagulls, and some seaweed-covered rocks. Geese AND Rocks, just as the name promised, see? We were impressed. And despite the cold wind off the water, we had a lovely walk.
After our little hike, we headed back to the barn. Literally. Paulo had found a more direct route and we were there in 10 minutes, which turned out to be just perfect. The other group had just finished up and they were ready with our two-seater. In minutes we were bundled under wool blankets and headed out into the snowy countryside behind old Red, the willing Belgian.
The ride was beautiful and peaceful, and our host was a character.
After a good long ride, we arrived back at the barn for hot chocolate (only perfect after our afternoon in the cold) and a visit with our hosts. By the time we'd finished chatting and drinking cocoa, it had gotten dark outside and it was time to track down dinner. Somehow, Paulo was still managing, although he admitted later that the sleigh ride had been a challenge for his stomach, and we hoped to get something to eat before he collapsed for the day. We had already decided that the trip into Portland for pool and drinks wasn't going to happen that night.
Since the restaurant we'd hoped to visit was closed for six weeks, Paulo had found a back-up spot in Old Orchard Beach. It was a pub and family eatery, it said, and it had a gluten-free menu. On the way, we called home to check in and to say goodnight to the kids and make sure that everything was still OK. While I was talking, we entered Old Orchard. Unlike the roads everywhere else, the roads in Old Orchard were completely snow-covered, and going was slow. As we putted onto the main drag my jaw dropped. Down the center of the street there was an enormous mountain of snow that stretched almost its entire length. Although it was dark, there were several kids with sleds climbing up one end of the mountain and as we began down the street along side of the mountain it became clear that the mountain was in fact a long sledding hill, and they were sliding down it by the light of the street lamps. I suddenly wished that we'd brought a sled with us!
It's hard to get an idea of the scale of hill from this perspective, but it was big, and the center run had clearly been packed and banked by heavy equipment. Main street traffic moved on either side. Slowly.
I wish we had pictures from our dinner. The pub was clearly a local joint, and everyone in town seemed to have gathered there. There was a guy with a guitar and mike providing the evenings' entertainment, and one very drunk white-haired old lady walking table-to-table and regaling folks with tales of her winning the day's human dog sled race. Everyone knew everybody else. Well, everyone but us.
You see, it was the weekend of the Winter Festival in Old Orchard. All the snow on the streets had been plowed that way on purpose, which explained the giant down-town sledding hill. Everyone was in a celebratory mood, singing and dancing along with the songs in a merry, drunken, and familiar way. The table of old ladies next to us kept yelling "SUSAN!!!," "JANE!!!," "MARY!," as more old ladies gathered. I couldn't believe I didn't have a video camera. I felt like I'd fallen into an episode of 30 Rock where they'd wandered outside of the city. Amazing.
And so ended our full day away. By the time we got back to the inn, Paulo was toast. He went straight to bed with a stomach ache, as expected. I watched a bit of Autism the Musical on DVD, read, and turned in, too. That night I slept soundly in that giant, warm bed with the fire gently crackling. The next morning would bring a delicious, truly gluten-free breakfast and a drive home, once again, through falling snow.
