Travel Advisory: Foreign Travel With Young Children May Cause Parental Insanity

I know my mother is reading the title of this post, shaking her head, and laughing. In fact, several of you are probably doing the same thing; how many people asked, when we first began planning this trip, "And you're taking both kids?" How many times did I ask myself the same question: Is this reasonable? Well, friends, it took us this long, but this morning we finally achieved meltdown -- parental meltdown, that is (the kids have had several minor freak-outs, flake-outs, and, as we used to call them when Finn was a toddler, "ragers"--but as any parent knows, it's not the kid's breakdown that matters, it's the parent's).

Last week, had you asked any of the four of us, we'd probably have said life here was beyond peachy (J'ai la peche!), and, of course, it was true. Hyeres is charming; the weather is gorgeous; and after our rather miserable stint in the hospital with Vivi, getting here at all seemed a beautiful miracle. And it is. We're still happy to be here. This setting is still, as our students have taken to saying, "heavenly." We're still immeasurably grateful for this opportunity to see France together and to get to teach subjects we love in a place that is rich in history and beauty.

A breakdown was, I think, inevitable though.

In our family, reaching the parental melting point generally requires a constellation of catastrophes: exhaustion, guilt, impatience, obligation. When those nasty little stars align, voila: domestic disaster. This morning the conditions for such disaster were perfect. Vivi is still not on a routine, which has been causing all kinds of rocky behavior (routine being a sacred thing for children under three), the worst of which is sleeplessness. Yesterday she napped on our bus ride back from Toulon at 6 p.m. I remember such evening naps being part of the "pre-funcing" process when I was a college student--in other words, one took an evening nap prior to attending a late function, staving off exhaustion so that the party could last all night. The nap kept one's nineteen-year-old body going until midnight, one, two a.m. without fail. And, it turns out, the effect of a late nap is the same on an 18 month-old body. Way past her bedtime last night, Vivi was still ready to party like it was 1999. The rest of us, however, were not in the partying mood. It was 12:30 a.m. before she finally dropped off to sleep, and only then lying in bed beside me, not in her own crib.

I really do believe that I'm pretty solid on little sleep. But sleep deprivation is said to affect a person cumulatively. Like sun exposure, or hunger, lack of sleep is manageable in small doses, but when it becomes chronic the sleepless body begins to fail. As I haven't had a full 8-hour night in probably a month, at least, I woke up this morning (at 7, with Vivi) feeling it. And, as even science now shows, when mommy isn't happy, no one is happy. (If the scene that followed my waking had been a cartoon, there would have been flames erupting from my mouth and smoke from Nathan's singed head.)

He's taken the children out now to give me some space. It's Father's Day, so perhaps that's appropriate (though what I always want most on Mother's Day is a few hours alone and free of my motherhood... is that terrible to publicly admit?). I think his decision to give me some time alone is less empathy than fear (all good fathers know when their partner has reached the limit of patience), but I'm glad to have this parental timeout. The silence of the apartment alone is a bit of a balm.

In considering the events of the morning, I think this kind of familial discord is simply one of the hazards of traveling with children. The routine gets disrupted (which is, of course, part of the point of traveling in the first place). The disruption causes sleeplessness, irritation, short tempers--on the part of both the children and the adults.

I've thought several times since arriving here what it would have been like to come without the kids--long mornings sitting with my husband at the cafe, drinking coffee and reading or writing; long afternoon walks through the ville, or bus rides into the surrounding villages; sleep. But the truth is, we're already doing most of these things with the children here (okay, maybe not the long mornings of reading and writing, but the rest of it, yes), and the kids have been troopers. We've had very little whining, very little bad behavior, very little family tension. And traveling together is a gift. Watching Finn slowly pick up more and more fragments of the French language brings me a kind of joy I can't fully express. Seeing Vivi healthy again and tottering across the sandy Mediterranean beach makes my heart swell with gratitude. Each evening we've been asking Finn how he'd rate the day, and he always says, "This was the best day ever!" And that, really, is the heart of things.

For the following week, I will myself to find the same kind of enthusiasm, the same intrepid curiosity and joy, the same unflagging good mood as my children are demonstrating. (After all, I don't want to have to spend another Sunday morning in timeout.)