157 Steps
Like gluttons for punishment or toddlers to the Iphone that they cannot unlock, my husband and I keep trying to take our kids camping. Camping was a big part of our early days together, and back then, we had dreamed of the day when we’d take our someday babies with us, teaching them to love the way the wind sounds in the forest and to be hypnotized by the magic that is a nighttime campfire. What we didn’t know then, and only painfully know now, is that camping with kids is kind of the worst.
For our first attempt, our kids were aged six months old and barely two. We packed an apocalypse-worth amount of survival items in our minivan for the weekend and set off. I had made lists! We were prepared! We enjoyed our s’mores, and then put them in pajamas by the interior light of our minivan while we prayed that the drunk college kids at the next campsite would turn down the Kenny Chesney.
But, as we discovered at 4 a.m., under the dim light of the van, we had inadvertently put our oldest in a swim diaper which left him soaked and freezing at 4 a.m., when he woke up and started yelling about it. Our still-drunk neighbors, also in tents, as well as every camper within a thirty-foot radius, heard his every cry, until my husband Eric, like a very tired Superman, bravely buckled our angry, damp octopus into his car seat and drove a few miles down the road to change him. Eric then drove around for two hours and watched the sun rise while our toddler slept it off in the back. My daughter and I slept on in the tent, blissfully unaware of the rising sun apart from the occasional dream feed.
Wiser people may have heeded the warning of that first attempt, but the siren song of nature was too great for us to resist the next year. So we tried it again, everyone a year older, and theoretically, a year wiser. This time, we strategized, we planned for, the midnight cry. So we brought two tents - for the four of us - my husband and son in one, my daughter and I in the other, hoping our kids wouldn’t wake each other up. Well in advance, we’d picked a campsite at the far end of the camp, as far away as possible from other sites. I had confidence in Team Girl...my daughter has always been a dream sleeper, even from around five weeks old. After our hot dogs and s’mores, we wished each other goodnight and goodluck.
Right on schedule, around 4 a.m., I was awakened by what sounded like an angry pterodactyl in the tent beside me. Elsa and I proceeded to spend the next three hours in the passenger seat of our van where she worked through some serious abdominal distress while my eyes strained towards the horizon for any sign of the rising sun to put an end to our misery.
After that, we swore off tents for a while and opted for those cushy electric cabins you find on a KOA, just steps away from a pool and an air-conditioned rec room with foosball and nachos for sale. Our younger, minimalist camper selves, scoffed at the middle-aged comfort seekers we’d become, but you know what? It worked. Everyone slept through the night. Even our third-born who was now along for the ride.
This past summer, our kids ages 7, 5, and 3, we decided to try a new approach. We stayed in a non-electric rustic cabin, trying to tiptoe back towards our minimalist days. The cabin had just enough beds for the 5 of us to share and was exactly 157 steps from the closest bathroom.
This detail is critical because the night before we were to leave on our epic 4-day excursion, our youngest threw up in the middle of the night, per Murphy’s Law. We delayed our departure time by a few hours to let him nap, and he woke up seeming more perky. So armed with barf bags, we departed and made it to our campsite several hours later. We high-fived as we unpacked the cooler because we thought we were in the clear.
We were wrong.
The next night, just after dinner, our youngest, who is relatively new to underwear, said he needed to poop. I dutifully carried him a sprinting 157 steps to the bathroom in an attempt to get him there on time, and he proceeded to produce nothing, at least, not until we got back to our cabin porch, where he made the curious request for me to “wipe him.” As I proceeded to assist him, his bowel movement came shot out of him — onto my hand, and all over the floor.
We did our best to clean him and the floor with the baby wipes that we’d brought, along with a generous helping of hand sanitizer. Later that night, he woke up crying in some kind of fever nightmare, and unable to calm him down, I relied on memory and threw him in the car in an attempt not to anger the rest of the campground. I drove him in circles for another 45 minutes until he calmed down, and we were able to wearily returned to the cabin.
The next day, it was my daughter’s turn. Playing on the campground playground, she suddenly sprinted towards the bathroom, and made it inside the door, where she proceeded to have a bowel movement...all over the floor. At this point, we’d gone through almost half of our 56 oz. bottle of Purell and well over half of the clothes we’d packed.
By day three, we seemed to be past the worst of it. My husband and I even congratulated ourselves on not getting sick, assuring ourselves that we would have gotten it by now if we were going to get it. But that night, my oldest woke us up at 3 a.m. to tell us he felt like throwing up. But the thing was, so did I. I sprint-waddled the 157 steps to the bathroom and made it just in time. By the time I got back, my son was asleep, barf bag near his pillow, but I spent the next 2 hours, twisting in bed, nauseous and getting sicker by the minute.
I finally got up to try to go the bathroom again, and decided to just drive our van down to the bathroom and spend the night in our backseat so that I could be closer to the toilet. I will tell you this: I have given birth naturally and endured a life-threatening illness, but that night by the campground bathroom was undoubtedly the worst night of my life.
The next morning, we all headed down to the showers to hose off the germs before our ride home, and I came out of the bathroom, carrying loads of wet towels and toiletries, along with a garbage bag my kids’ soiled clothing, while my husband helped get their teeth brushed. I set my things down on the end of a nearby picnic table with a sigh, and an older woman, around my mom’s age, glanced up at me from her solitaire game. She nodded over to my kids at the sink and asked if they were all mine. Yes. All of them. Another sigh.
She began to tell me about the camping trips she and her own kids would take, empathizing with me over all the work it takes, remembering the days of packing, the food preparation, the long drives. Then, she shared that she and her husband were finishing up a six-week solo sojourn in a camper, having visited several national parks. We locked eyes for a moment and knew we would trade places in a heartbeat— she nostalgic for those busy days, me jealous of the ease of her empty nest.
I nearly started crying. So, trying to mask my overwhelm with jokes, I told her about all of the bodily fluids I’d handled in the last few days. She shared a sympathetic smile with me and then said, “It’s a lot, isn’t it? This work you’re doing? But your kids will remember this. This is what connects a family. Keep up the good work, mama.”
Keep up the good work, mama.
I blinked back tears because nothing about my efforts that weekend had felt good.
She didn’t know how minutes earlier, I’d scolded two of my kids as the three of us tried to squeeze into a stand-up shower stall together and get everyone cleaned up within the timeframe of the five minutes of quarters we’d placed into the timer. She didn’t know how annoyed I’d been at the kids earlier the previous day when they’d whined through a very brief but beautiful hike along Lake Superior. She didn’t know how sorry I’d felt for myself each time I had bagged up another pair of poopy pants, knowing the real work of all this laundry was awaiting me at home.
But as we parted ways, her words sank in.
This is what connects a family.
Keep up the good work, Mama.
This work is hard. This work is good.
Keep it up, Mamas.