We had a lovely week at Pawleys Island, SC, as we usually do. This year, we agreed on the way home, was a lot better than last year, when I was so impaired that I felt like an invalid much of the time, and the year before, when Ben had a major work issue hanging over him. It seemed easier to keep track of the kids, too, and at 3 and a half, Elias is getting more independent and easier to handle. It felt like we each got turns relaxing one way or the other. I read about 300 pages of the new translation of War and Peace, which was pure bliss. Ben knocked off a running book and a collection of wry essays about modern fatherhood. The kids played in the sand and surf. Ben caught a jelly fish in a bucket. I found an enormous live conch, with the creature still at home inside it. My happiest moments, I think, were when I looked out over my book and saw one boy playing happily in the sand, and one boy bobbing happily in the waves.
All this makes what happened after we got home all the harder to accept: we got an e-mail from the owner of the inn saying that our reservation "will not be honored" next year. There have been complaints about us as parents and about the boys' behavior. In short, we've been exiled.
The news came on Tuesday, and honestly I could not have been more shocked. Why would anyone not like us?? We're nice! Why would they say we're bad parents? We're good parents! My next reaction was utter crushing shame: we're horrible parents and we've raised two monsters. Where did we go wrong?? My next reaction was bitterness: we didn't like it there too well anyway, those rigid mealtimes and gruff servers. Then came anger: why couldn't they have at least talked to us about it while we were there? I mean, why… we've been going there every summer for the last five years, Ben went to Pawleys Island as a child (although to a different inn that no longer exists) and Ben's mother went to this very inn when she was a child. Elias took his first steps there. We've made friends there, and so have the kids. Given all that history, couldn't they have a least talked to us a little bit? GIven us some sort of head's up? Instead of just the sudden axe?
It was much like being suddenly broken up with when you thought the relationship was going great.
Since the initial blow, I've been reviewing the week in painful detail, trying to figure out what anyone could've complained about. At first I thought, "They were in the ocean the whole time, what on earth could they possibly have done?" And also it's kids' week! All the kids roam around freely doing kid things. What did they do that was different from any of the other kids? I remembered the time I stopped Isaac from squirting the hose too much, and when he started right up again, how Ben dragged him upstairs for a lecture and a time-out. Or the many times we sat the kids down and reviewed the rules, especially the one about no running. It seemed to me that we were on top of things, it really did. We handed the kids off to each other and took turns having kid-free time.
But on closer inspection a few things came to mind. I knew that one lady was really mad at Isaac, when he stepped on the shell of a crab she had found. I arrived about a minute after it happened, and didn't see the incident itself, but I could see that the lady was madder than a wet hen about it. Her allegation was that Isaac had seen her beautiful shell and stepped on it intentionally to destroy it. His claim was that he thought it was a leaf. My gut feeling was that if this shell was so precious to this woman, she shouldn't have left this sand-colored object, hello, IN THE SAND right where people were walking in any case. It seemed pretty dumb to me. And knowing Isaac as I do, I think that if he had realized it was a nice in tact crab shell, his reaction would not be to destroy it, but to investigate it closely, possibly with a magnifying glass. So given all this, I frankly believed Isaac's story about the leaf. But since the lady was so upset, I did make him apologize to her, and I apologized to her myself. I'm not sure what else I could've done. Possibly she complained about it, though. She seemed pretty pissed.
And then there was the incident of the lost Pokemon game cartridge. A teenage girl there had very kindly been letting Isaac use her little hand-held video game, a Nintendo DS, which has been Isaac's greatest desire for about three years. Indeed, when not in the ocean, Isaac was most often seen on the couch in the living room, curled up with his little girlfriend (a sweet girl of 5) and playing DS. I worried that he was using the batteries up and asked if we could buy some more, but was assured that it was okay, it charged with a plug-in. So we were eating dinner when the girl, no longer generous and instead in one of those dramatic teenage rages, came over and demanded to know where her Pokemon cartridge had gone. This little postage-stamp-sized game fits into the machine like a card in a digital camera, and apparently Isaac had lost it. A thorough search of all sort of places ensued, with Ben and I fully engaged in the problem. I offered to replace it immediately if it was truly lost. But after a half hour or so, we did find it. Isaac had two pairs of shorts that were identical, and after swimming had put on a different pair, and the game was in the pocket of the other one. But the girl was pretty angry about it, and possibly her parents complained.
One possible thought is that that particular time he was playing DS, Isaac didn't have permission to play it. He might have picked it up in the living room. Or… what if he actually went into her room and took it?! If that's what happened, I could see that that's totally unacceptable. He denies this completely, and I really don't know. I just sense that her anger seemed a little overblown, given the facts as I knew them.
Then there's the fort-building incident. Since the e-mail contained no detail as to the nature of the crime (just that our children were not properly supervised), I'm not sure whether I'm being paranoid, or whether this actually was one of the issues. My sense is that it was. One evening Ben and I were down on the beach with both boys– pure heaven. Cool breezes and lapping waves, and that beautiful soft light after the sun has set but before it's at all dark. After a while Isaac went back up to the house, and Elias and Ben and I stayed down on the beach a bit more. When I came up, Isaac and his little girlfriend had made a fort of couch cushions in the living room. I wasn't sure about the protocol on this, but since no one seemed to be using the room at the moment, I didn't see the harm in it. There was just sort of a general festive atmosphere, some people drinking beer on the porch, someone playing guitar someplace, other people having a snack or doing a puzzle, what have you. So I let them play the fort of couch cushions for a while. Then it was time for bed and we put all the cushions and pillows back where they belonged. Was that a problem? Did someone complain about that? Maybe someone passing through at that time wanted to sit there, and couldn't, and was miffed?
I don't know. I could go on like this, with these possibly petty/possibly serious items. Of course, I'm also aware that the gist of the complaint was that we were not on the case with supervising the kids. These are a few things that I know about, but what if they were running amok and doing all sorts of things we don't know about? I can't imagine when that would've been, because I feel that we knew what they were up to at least most of the time, but it's possible.
What I didn't realize is that we might have actually been on probation from last year. Indeed, last year at Pawleys was rough on all of us, because I was so sick there and Elias was that much littler and harder to keep track of. I remember some rough times with managing both the kids, and indeed Isaac was not helpful. He actually rather cruelly exploited my illness and took advantage of the fact that I couldn't bodily restrain him, or even catch him if he didn't want to be caught. That meant I had to rely on Ben, and there was Elias to manage, and the place kind of sprawls out– the marsh, the road, the inn itself with all its rooms and passageways, then the porch, deck, beach. If one parent was far away or impossible to find, the other one might be in a difficult position for a while. I remember one kind mom helping me catch Isaac so that I could drag him down to Ben, who was on the beach, and Isaac actually purposely yanking my arm in order to make me dizzy! For pure spite, hatred and malice! I felt an acute level of rage and betrayal at that moment, and admonished Isaac thoroughly through clenched teeth. Possibly this scene, and others like it, cast a pall over our family's reputation at the inn.
Anyway, what happened was that the inn "lost" our reservation for this year, and we lost our usual room. We did get into another less-nice room for the same week, but were disappointed about it and felt mildly rebuffed as it was. Then we got this envelope on our dresser when we arrived this year, with the rules in it (they are posted all over the place, no running, etc.), and the handwritten words, 'Please read carefully." Which we did! We sat down and read them and discussed them with the kids thoroughly. Then we did our level best to enforce them, too. But not good enough. In retrospect I think that all was a forewarning of what was to come.
I feel a bit peeved that they took the passive-aggressive route of losing our reservation and hoping we would disappear, rather than just telling us directly that they had some concerns about our parenting and the way the kids were behaving. But at the same time, I do think there were some things we should've done differently. This whole thing has caused us to reflect on our parenting strengths and weaknesses, and to find that we really do need to get better control of the little varmints. We can also see that this whole year of being sick has taken a toll on our family in so many ways. In survival mode and horizontal so much of the time, there's no question that I tolerated many things that I would not have had I been healthy and ambulatory instead. I think the screen time is another real issue– Isaac is stationary while watching something, and for me that has been half the battle. If he's sitting still, then there's only Elias left to manage. But I'm sure that too much tv/Wii has had a bad effect on his behavior. And let's face it, discipline has never been my strong suit in the best of times. We're trying to turn this whole experience into something of a wake-up call. Yes, we've lost control of the situation, and we need to regain it. It's sort of like the process I'm in to physically rebuild my body. We need to rebuild the family structure here and get the reins again. I bought a discipline book and Ben bought a different one, and we're just generally trying to run a tighter ship around here now.
So where does that leave us? We haven't broken the news to Isaac about not going back to Pawleys again. I think he'll be okay with not seeing the crabs and jelly fish again– he was really getting pretty anxious about them towards the end of the week– but there will be some special friends he will surely miss. I don't know how to approach it with him. I'm not sure whether this is a teachable moment– yes, your actions have consequences– or if it's just too extreme a consequence. It would be so easy for him to take this all to heart too much, take away the idea that he's such a bad boy we can never go back there again. It's been shocking and harsh even to us adults. I'm afraid that if he gets wind of it at all, he'll put it all on himself in a harmful way. I think he's too young to cope with all the nuances of this situation– and to understand that the problem is defined not as HIM– he's only seven, after all– but as our lack of management of him. Maybe the best way to think about this, for my own mental health anyway, is that it turns out "we were not a good fit" for that place.
So, onward. It's been quite painful to be rejected like this, but we'll get over it. There's a big world out there, and lots of wonderful vacation things to do. Maybe we should go white water rafting, or skiing in Banff, or hiking in Alaska, or to Paris or London or Seville. I hear there's a volcano in Hawaii that's been erupting for years, and also I've always wanted to see the Great Barrier Reef. Maybe we should walk Hadrian's Wall in the UK, or go birding in Coast Rica… It will be a fun project over the winter to dream and plan something new to do.