Countdown to Canada

Thunderstorms are forecast for the next ten days. Why did I ever suggest going on a two-week camping trip to the edge of civilization? These sorts of things always seem such a good idea during the middle of the semester when you can’t possibly go anywhere. But now, 12 hours from our time of departure, the idea seems like complete madness. Thomas has expectations that he is going spend much of the time playing a Gameboy. After Simon and I quickly disabused him of that notion, he set out to collect a giant stack of Lego sets to bring along and assemble during the trip. Simon and I insisted that to do so was asking for disaster. I imagined a 1,000 mile long trail of Lego bits, dotted around Lake Superior like dandelion seeds, never to be seen again. Thomas, ever the optimist, insisted that my worries were unfounded. “How could pieces get lost if I work on the sets in the car or in the tent?” As he says those words the past 8 years played through my mind and I recalled the countless occasions in which Thomas is standing next to my car, sobbing uncontrollably, because somewhere in the backseat is that special dime he found in the parking lot or that last red M&M he was saving or that little plastic bit that came with that plastic thing and if I don’t find it the whole thing will never work and he didn’t even get to really play with it because we just got it.…And of course no matter how many times I feel around the floor of my car or cram my fingers into the cracks of the car’s backseat we never do find any of those things. Where are they all? And just how much crap can fit into the secret spaces of my car? Thomas dismisses my concerns—he was little then, a mere child, prone to the misfortunes of slippery pieces. And yet wasn’t it a mere two weeks ago that he had a near meltdown when he thought he had lost his brand new Pikachu marble just seconds after I told him to wait until we got home to open the package? And what about the time we were coming home from the Lansing Zoo and Frederick, after grabbing Thomas’ brand new Magnamorph creatures (mutatable things held together with magnets) and we couldn’t find the reptile leg? “Ah, ha!” Thomas says, triumphantly, “we DID find the Pikachu marble AND the leg”—“‘We’? I think it was me that found both.”—“Well, there you go. So you’ll find the Lego, too.” And with that he neatly shifts his argument from “They won’t get lost” to “I will lose them but I have complete confidence that you will find them again” with the unstated, yet implied, claim being, “And if you do not, I will sob uncontrollably for hours and hours.” This trip has me completely worn out and we haven’t even begun packing.