What I forgot to take into account were the wild mood swings of my 3-year-old. The first 24 hours of our trip were, for the most part, pretty fantastic, punctured by a few memorable hair-raising, death-defying tantrums — we're talking running away from Mommy and Daddy down the hallway of a hotel wearing only a wet bathing suit (tantrum level: expert). By the time we were seated for lunch at Good 'N Plenty — an Amish-style restaurant so famous that it has a whole brochure to itself — I felt rather on edge, and it didn't help that (1) Good 'N Plenty was virtually silent and (2) the couple at the table next to us looked exactly like this.
One blessedly peaceful car nap in the Amish countryside later, we found ourselves at Dutch Wonderland (which, for the uninformed, is an amusement park for young children with an unspecified, vaguely medieval castle theme and absolutely no Dutch connection whatsoever). (Side note: While Eli was napping, Phil directed me to drive to a roadside pretzel stand in the middle of farmland. They were closed, but a perusal of Yelp reviews revealed that there is a dude who drives from New York City to Lancaster twice a year just for the pretzels, so how bummed are we that we didn't get to try them? Side note #2, there was literally a sign on the door that said "Temporarily closed; if you need anything, come to the house and we will open for you," and we should have gone to the house and asked for a pretzel!)
The very first thing that happened at Dutch Wonderland was that Eli really wanted to ride the train, but he did not want to wait in the line to ride the train. If you are a parent who has ever anticipated and then tried to head off a public tantrum, you know exactly how this moment felt. All my fight-or-flight instincts started to kick in. It felt like I was in for a long afternoon of reasoning with Eli, of modeling patience, of desperately cooking up little games to play while waiting in line. In short: a long afternoon of acting like an adult. Oh, the humanity!
But by some miracle we were the last riders to make it on to the train. As we started to chug around the park, Eli giggled with genuine glee every time we saw the signal arms clanging down to block the track. And a funny thing happened: I started to have fun. He was so happy, so absolutely loving the ride that I stopped fretting about the next meltdown around the corner and started to enjoy seeing him so happy.
Hours later, we were heading out of "storytime with Princess Brooke" when it suddenly seemed to have grown dark. I suggested to Eli that it might be a fun time to go on the SkyRide, a kind of open-air tram that takes you all the way across the park, to see the lights in the dark from the air. When we realized the ride was one-way only, Phil said he'd meet us at the other end.
As we waited on line, it suddenly started to rain, and as we headed further up the stairs, I realized it was growing chilly. Our jackets were in the stroller with Phil. A guy coming off the ride advised us against it — "The rain hits you in the face and it's really cold out there!" he said — and I tried to convince Eli to skip it. But he was determined: He wanted to ride.
The ride is like a ski lift, in that it doesn't stop when your car comes around. So I hoisted Eli up into the seat and quickly settled in next to him, and off we went.
There was a brief, terrifying moment where I thought about all the tantrums we had endured over the past few days and about how high up in the air we were and how easily it seemed like Eli could slide under the bar. If he loses it in mid-air, we're goners, I thought. But the same thing happened that always happens when I expect the worst out of Eli: He surprises me by being a champ. He was totally unbothered by the chilly wind or the droplets of water beating against our backs or the fact that we were really, really, really high up in the air. He chatted away about the view ("Look at that ride spinning!"), our fellow passengers riding in the opposite direction ("Look, he's all by himself! He looks cold!") and my death grip on his arm ("Mommy, why do you have your arm around me so tight?").
Later, after we reunited with Phil and rushed in from the rain to a memorably awful dining experience known as "Merlin's Buffet," I tried to explain the whole experience to him while Eli nonchalantly munched on his mac and cheese: the rainbow holiday lights twinkling below us, the cool expanse of the dark sky, Eli's enthusiastic ramblings. And as I talked ("It was kind of terrifying, but also kind of magical"), I realized it was sort of a perfect encapsulation of parenting itself. It's holding it together when you're secretly concerned your kid might fall apart. It's preparing yourself to be surprised by your child and sparkling with pride when it happens. It's going on an adventure when logic says you probably shouldn't, knowing you can't stop the ride if you want to get off — and never letting go of your kid's hand.
It's kind of terrifying, but also kind of magical.
I've written before about how I struggled with PPD when Eli was born. And here's a secret: I continue to struggle with it, mostly in the form of guilt about how I didn't enjoy those newborn days like everyone warned me I should. The morning after the SkyRide I had this weird thought (while running on the treadmill at the gym, of all places): When Eli was born I could only see how high up in the air we were, how far we could fall if we slipped. I could only feel how chilly the wind was and how the rain was beating against my back. I only saw the parts of the ride that were the most terrifying, because I didn't yet have Eli to point out how the lights were glowing and the rides were spinning and the music was playing. I needed Eli to help me realize that the cold and the wet and the height wasn't such a big deal. I needed Eli to show me everything that was magical about the wonderland.
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