Obama's Family Vacation: An Oxymoron Case Study

Having just returned from four days visiting my mother in San Diego with my two children, Gene (13) and Gemma (10), I viewed photos of the Obama's summer vacation with a slightly jaundiced eye. Perhaps I was projecting, or still jet-lagged, but wasn't eight-year-old Sasha looking a little sullen?

I'm not nitpicking here, but rooting for that real emotion. It's unfair to rob a little sister of her justifiable family vacation snit. Where's Sasha's meltdown?

Trust me: it has to happen, on this vacation or the next, and I hope when it does, she melts off-stage.

My 10-year-old had a doozy last Saturday that even ice cream seemed incapable of curing. It was one of those old Smothers Brothers routines, in which she accused me of loving her brother more because he makes me laugh. (Can I help it if he's funny?) Gemma went on and on in front of Grandma and the entire population of Balboa Park. She railed at the perceived injustice until my ability to laugh it off eroded from initial tolerance, to bribery, to hushed sidecar discussions.

And while Gemma's tempest didn't blow on-camera, it did happen in front of my older sister. We have, to put it mildly, a competitive sibling relationship. Gemma ran off to Auntie P. and said she wanted to move in with her. Ouch!

So I looked at sweet, occasionally sulky Sasha and her more sophisticated 11-year-old sister Malia (who appeared a little bored with all the ice cream photo ops), and I had to agree with my good friend D.: the term "family vacation" was an oxymoron.

But what D. also wisely reminded me was that while parents might return from vacation tired, and cranky, and feeling like the entire exercise was counter-therapy, kids remembered it differently. Hopefully, my kids will recall afternoons playing badminton with their cousins, and boogie boarding at Pacific Beach, and watching two orangutans cuddle amorously at the zoo, long after I popped my final Xanax.

So, I'm curious: tell me your family vacation memories...snits welcome!

Comments

[agathocles]

I'd feel better about sharing vacation meltdowns if they weren't my own.

Kids are still learning the coping mechanisms and it is expected that as they learn their perception of life's complexities may outpace their ability to manage their reaction to them.

What I like second most about the Obamas is how comfortable they appear in the public eye. I almost believe that they are just regular folk like you and I.

[agathocles]

I'd be much more inclined to share about the vacation meltdowns if they weren't my own.

Kids acting-out is perfectly excusable as they're still learning the coping mechanisms that will hopefully someday enable them to express themselves appropriately or even better when not to express it at all.
And that goes for Presidential children as well as those of journalists and everybody else. What I like second most about the Obama's is that they're so comfortable being themselves in the public eye that I actually believe that they're just regular folk like you and me.

[sbrown80]

I just don't know why you guys tend to infer emotions on a child just from looking at pictures. It's such a juvenile thing to do. The little girl cannot smile 24/7 to appear non threatening to easily scared white pple. Now poor eight year old Sasha has to keep a smile spread across her face or else she'll be characterized as the "angry blk girl." I promise you, sometimes a non smile just means a non smile, period.

[Siobhan11]

I used to have a boss who would come into the office when I was absorbed doing my work and say " smile" . Finally I said to him "if you walked in here and found me by myself smiling at my computer you would think i was goofy." I smile during conversations. Just not all the time.

[Thelma Adams - Huffpost Blogger]

"you guys" and "easily scared white pple?": oh, sbrown80, do you have an axe to grind? are you "inferring" some thing that you didn't intend to? Am I forbidden to comment on a daughter because she's not the same skin color as my own? If that was so, then I'd truly be scared.

[Trevor A]

I find your lack of perspective... disturbing. *breathes heavily*

Ms. Adams has shown that she knows what she is talking about. She is a mother, and it is widely accepted that mothers have a 6th sense for children, neh? Children aren't good at hiding emotions. They wear them on their sleeves. Couple that with the aforementioned 6th sense, and it isn't very strange that Ms. Adams was able to infer what she did. Even from a picture.

What I find offensive about YOUR comment is that you plainly state that white people are easily scared sheeple. That a little girl would have to try and appear non-threatening to us. YOU bring race into it. A little girl would only scare me, el gringo, if she happened to be Alma from F.E.A.R. You have to be a real pansy to consider a child threatening at all, and a real bigot to assume that Los Gringos are collective pansies.

Oh, and if you don't know who Alma is... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_F.E.A.R._characters_and_organizations#Alma_Wade

You will know true FEAR. :D

[weatherwaxx]

This isn't about the Obama's vacation--it's about yours.

Not the same.

Not that your vacation isn't a great topic for you to write about, but why conflate the two?

[Thelma Adams - Huffpost Blogger]

It's a personal essay with a news hook. I think my family's experience shines a light on the Obamas and vice versa.

[Caryn James - Huffpost Blogger]

I remember my own snits being much worse as an adolescent than they were at 10 -- but kids are so much more precocious now! Let's hope Gemma's getting it out of her system early -- and unlike poor Sasha, at least she doesn't have to worry herself or you about CNN capturing an on-camera meltdown.

[Thelma Adams - Huffpost Blogger]

yes. And since we don't take home movies, my kids are free from being videotaped -- even if it's not CNN. I remember being captured throwing a tantrum at the park on Super 8, and being mortified every time my parents played the film for guests.

[Thelma Adams - Huffpost Blogger]

My friend Lewis Beale writes from North Carolina:

I have no meltdown stories, but this happened when I was 10, and my family was on a motor trip that would take us from Philly through New England and on into Quebec and Montreal. We had stayed overnight in White River Junction, Vt. (I remember the town because I thought the name was exotic and beautiful - still do), and were having breakfast in a local diner.
My mother, a striking looking woman who was always very fashionable, and also quite demanding when it came to 'service,' had ordered scrambled eggs, but when they were delivered, they were a bit runny, so she sent them back. We were all sitting at the counter, and this was in one of these old-style diners where the grill was right up front, and we could see everything the cook was doing.
Well, the cook disagreed with the waiter that the eggs were not cooked well enough, and they got into an argument. At one point, the cook grabbed the plate of eggs and threw it at the waiter. The waiter ducked, and the plate hit my mom full in the face.
Utter silence. Then my mom looked down at her dress, now decorated with runny eggs, and began to cry. All I remember from that point is that the management, as they should have, paid for our breakfast, and the dry cleaning bill.

[PiscesPrincess]

Your comments re: vacations with your children reminded me of the few I suffered through when my girls were girls. More power to you.

[PiscesPrincess]

Well Put: Vacations for adults are a totally different bag than they are for kids.
end of story; end of statement.
lol those photos of the Obamas returning to Washington DC were so easy to read.
I really appreciate the typical family angst. again, lol

[Thelma Adams - Huffpost Blogger]

I remember traveling around the world with my parents to some memorable hotels -- chickens in the lobby in Mexico, air raid shelters in the basement in India -- and it all seems funnier in retrospect. I honestly don't know if my hating any food that wasn't Corn Flakes when I was seven was a passive aggressive reaction or simply a truly limited palate, but I caused my share of angst over that!