The Victors

So a little over a week ago, I posted about the in-law family reunion we were heading to in Anaheim to celebrate my MIL's 80th birthday. This involved 20+ people (the youngest being 13) cramming into an Airbnb for the week. Reflections:

1) I swore we'd be moving into a hotel after the first night, but we ended up sticking it out. The quarters were fairly tight and it wasn't always pleasant, but the house was laid out well and we were all able to make it work.

2) I was really worried about our oldest daughter, 17, and how she would respond. She gets overwhelmed and withdraws in these situations. Before we left, I told her I knew how she felt and I was feeling the exact same, that we'd need to work together to get through it. She totally stepped up. She would check in on me from time to time to see how I was doing, leaned in big time to connect with her older cousins, etc. Great reminder that our kids (and all of us) are works in progress can grow and improve. Our 15 year old son, however, took up her usual attitude and was a wet blanket most of the trip. He's usually the chill one. Just a reminder that we never totally get nice things as parents.

3) We spent 2 days at the Disney parks. I've posted before about our youngest daughter (14) who has cerebral palsy. She loves to ride everything, no matter the thrill level, so we absolutely depend on the theme park disability passes to get her through the parks during the day, especially when it's hot and sunny (she melts in those conditions). The rest of the family viewed the situation as a chance to jump to the front of all the lines. Disney's policy is that the disability pass holder and 3 others can ride together, so it was a negotiation at each ride to get our core family of 5 in together. My SIL (and then all of my nephews and nieces) were insistent that our group of 20+ get to ride together and were pouring on the guilt trip. I was told about an acquaintance of theirs who does this all the time and bullies the cast members into allowing everyone on together. I was like, no way, I can't even believe you're putting me in this position. They eventually relented and went off to do their own thing while we did ours, but it was so off-putting. The disability pass isn't a cheat code for families who really need it, it's the only way we can enjoy the fullness of the parks. And feeling like they wanted to use our daughter as a prop or bargaining chip for their selfish gains really pissed me off.

4) We stayed in Anaheim, but we were everywhere from Santa Monica to Dana Point for the rest of the days, revisiting and creating memories for my MIL where she lived the first 30 years of her life. I had no say in any of the plans and my Ops brain kept recoiling at the lack of thought that went into planning around traffic. Drives that could've taken 30-45 minutes regularly turned into 1.5-2 hour excursions. For example, why are we staying in Century City to see the new Spiderman movie that'll end at 5pm, when we could've driven back to Anaheim at 1:30 and seen the movie there, shaving an hour+ off of the drive? No one else seemed to share my concerns.

5) One really cool thing that happened: On Tuesday, while driving around Santa Monica, we stopped at the church my MIL attended as a child. As it turns out, it'd recently been sold and was being emptied out. Demolition crews were taking care of their business and the wrecking ball would start swinging the following morning. We asked if we could go inside and the crew let us, which I never would've done due to liability concerns. As we were leaving, a surfer bum outside told us he was sad to see the church go, and had played the piano in there about 5 years ago for his sister's funeral. He asked us if he could play the grand piano in the chapel one last time (like it was our call to make). We followed him back in and sat in the pews. Turns out this guy is a master pianist and he absolutely laid it down for about 10 minutes. It sounded incredible, but unbeknownest to me, the medley he played contained a couple of songs that were really meaningful to the rest of the family. There wasn't a dry eye in the chapel and he was really moved when he finished and saw how touched they were. Just a super serendipitous moment. And as we left, the crew was still hard at work outside, chucking church furniture into the dump trucks lined up along the curb.

6) After that 1:45 drive home from the Spiderman movie on the last night, I was exhausted and in a foul mood. There was karaoke and family gathering/ story telling in the house until 11pm and I pushed through it. I knew they were all leaving at 6am and we'd be getting up around 8:30, taking care of the Airbnb checkout, and then checking into a hotel by SNA to decompress before flying home yesterday morning. I was so pumped and couldn't wait.

And then we woke up that morning to an empty house and it was sad. For all of the chaos of the week, at least there was a ton of love in that house.

Maybe one of these days I'll learn to just embrace the good in these moments and keep everything in perspective. It wasn't this trip, but at least I was able to keep my cool, roll with all of the punches, endure the housing situation, apologize when I thought the others may have gotten a bad vibe from me or my family, and not blow up on anyone. Baby steps...