An Imperfect Vacation

My husband, Steve, and I prepared to take our daughters (Janelle, 16, and Suzanne, 11) to Williamsburg, Virginia, during our Easter vacation in the early 1990s when we lived in Southern Pines, N.C.

I purchased several new spring outfits to enjoy wearing during our family excursion.

Steve dutifully toted almost all the clothing his wife and daughters owned—at least it probably seemed that way to him—to our car.

We hadn’t even left our driveway when Steve accidentally dropped a two-gallon-sized glass jar holding assorted muffins I bought at Granny’s Doughnuts to enjoy on our long ride to Virginia from Southern Pines. There on the blacktop lay what seemed like a million shards of glass mixed with chunks of blueberry, banana-nut, bran, and apple-flavored muffins.

As we cleaned up the mess, Steve asked, “Why would you take a big glass jar like that on a trip anyway?” I’m sure he was also thinking “ridiculous, unbelievable, and insane!”

We drove off and were sort of quiet for the first few miles of our trip. As we moved along, the girls kept giggling in the backseat. I finally discovered they had been putting bits of torn-up Kleenex on the top of my hair. They could have put half a box of Kleenex on top of my hairdo before I felt anything because I have worn my hair teased as high as Marge Simpson’s (cartoon character Homer Simpson’s wife’s) hair since I was a freshman in high school in 1962. I’m glad they didn’t let me go into a Quick Mart wearing their Kleenex “trash hat” when we took a road break. 

We lodged in one room (with two double beds) in a Williamsburg motel. The accommodations were nice, except the beds were way too soft. We finally stood up the mattresses against a wall and spread sheets and blankets on top of the box springs. And we slept . . . sort of.

After four days in Williamsburg, we ate breakfast and began loading our car to return home. Once again, Steve dutifully toted his wife and daughters’ mammoth amount of clothing to our vehicle. I packed my new outfits, which I’d worn, in a white plastic bag and sent them to the car to be loaded.

We buckled up, settled in, and were riding down the road when Suzanne took out a booklet of Colonial Times paper dolls she bought at a Williamsburg gift shop. She happily punched out perforated dolls, fashions, and accessories. She was carefully matching up various costumes with each paper doll when her older sister decided to roll down a window. Paper dolls and their outfits went blowing and soaring all over the backseat—and I mean all over!

Suzanne screamed in protest.

Steve boomed in his loudest fatherly voice, “Janelle, why would you roll down the window? Didn’t you think about what would happen?” (He may have, once again, thought “ridiculous, unbelievable, and insane!”)

Janelle apologized and helped her sister collect her precious dolls with their fashions, paper powdered wigs, and all.

After we arrived at home, I began sorting everyone’s laundry and saw none of my new spring outfits. When quizzed, Steve finally realized he had left the coveted bag containing all my new outfits sitting on the sidewalk next to the parking lot of the break-your-back motel.

I pictured my beautiful clothes either stolen and sold at a consignment shop or mistaken for trash and thrown in the motel dumpster—where the cheap mattresses in room 207 should have been.

I called the motel.

I can’t tell you how relieved I was when a desk clerk assured me that someone had found my bag of clothes and turned it in to the front desk. I can’t tell you how irritated I was that it took three calls to that desk and one call to the motel manager to get my clothes boxed up and mailed to me in Southern Pines. I had begun to think I would receive my spring outfits just in time for the first ice storm of winter when the box finally arrived.

I’m sure there are many fascinating, historical facts I leaned about Colonial Williamsburg during our vacation, but my mind seems to most vividly recall muffins in a mess, mattresses of torture, and my mislaid, left-behind vacation clothes. We had an imperfect vacation.