Last week, after being parents for four years, six months, and 19 days, my husband and I went away without our children.
It was time. If I’m being completely honest it was well past time. We took the ferry to the Mainland and drop-kicked the kids out of the car and into my mom’s house and took off for the airport en route to a sunny beach and 12 hours of uninterrupted sleep.
And then I woke up and started packing for the real trip we were taking.
My husband is a fan of craft beer so for Christmas I got him a little getaway that included the Whistler and Squamish portions of the BC Ale Trail. The bcaletrail.ca itinerary suggests five days for this trip but, being overachievers, we opted to do it in two. Six craft breweries for him, a couple days without cooking and laundry for me, it worked. Plus, our children got to spend time with their grammy and gramps and their aunt and uncle and cousins and that’s like hitting the jackpot in their eyes.
On our second full-day away, we had spent an hour hiking the Stawmus Chief and were descending the mountain when we come upon a young couple skinny dipping in a prohibited pool below an icy cold waterfall that supplied the park’s drinking water.
“No water for us today,” my husband said dryly.
It was a beer trip after all.
We were still shaking that visual out of our heads when I got a text from my sister.
“Your kid’s a rockstar,” she said.
Obviously, I thought to myself. Why now?
It turned out my folks had taken my kids to a local playplace and another boy became aggressive, telling mine he was going to kill him.
According to my mother, my son fended off blows, warning the other boy he was trained in Spinjitsu (a ‘martial art’ used by Lego ninjas in the show Ninjago). He didn’t retaliate.
“He showed awesome restraint,” Mom said.
On our last day we were eager to get back to our babies and drove through the fog (literally and figuratively) along the Sea to Sky Highway in relative silence. Somewhere between Britannia Beach and Furry Creek we got a text from my mom. It was a photo of my children happy as clams, eating their breakfast in bed while watching a movie. It looked like they were having a heck of a vacation, too.
Eventually we arrived at my mom’s to pick up the kids and head to the ferry. I walked in the door and my youngest greeted me with a big smile, then wanted to show me all the cool stuff inside the house I spent the first 17 years of my life in. It was like she owned the place now. I’m not sure she missed us at all.
My eldest…well, he was mad at me.
“Go away!” he growled as I went in for a hug. I wasn’t too surprised. I knew he’d be a little bent we ditched him for a few days.
“Go away!” he said again. “You’re ruining it! You’re ruining my vacation. Go back to Squamish!”
I was not expecting that.
It turned out he wasn’t quite ready to end his parent-free vacation and preferred if we went back to ours, too.
It wasn’t until the ferry lineup that we asked about The Playpark Incident.
By and large, he corroborated my mom’s version of events. Except for one thing.
My meek, shy, under-sized four-year-old told me he decked the kid.
Why would he do such a thing? It wasn’t because the kid threatened to kill him.
The kid was picking on his sister.
While I don’t condone him hitting a kid, I’m pretty pleased it was at least for a noble cause.
“Nobody messes with my sister,” he said.
sarah.simpson@cowichanvalleycitizen.com
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