Vacation Ends

We have been at my parents' house for a week, and tomorrow we begin the long trek home. We are rested and well-fed and feeling adventurous - we will take a new route! we will rent a hotel room! we will spend the morning in a museum! - but after the first 10-hour leg of our journey, we may collapse on the hotel doorstep and whimper until passing strangers offer us free childcare.

It could happen.

This vacation has been a child's delight. They have swum every day. They have painted pictures and played dress-up and had a tea party. The cousins cavort together in a flock, herded and ordered by my mother. If my mother had her own pagan myth, she would be the hero who vanquishes chaos and builds Creation out of its carcass. Look on the Grandmother, you Titans, and tremble. She will make a crib toy out of your bones.

And now we are leaving. The children will cry, because they always cry. We will hand them books and buckle them in and promise them McNuggets and after the amount of whining alotted by the fates, we will be home. I will climb into my own bed and sleep and sleep and wonder if the last week was a dream.