Tortillas and Triumph--or Nacho Mama's Vacation

As we were toasting the four month anniversary of our adventure with club soda, nachos and guacamole at Nacho Mamas, the local Mexican restaurant in Ubud, Bali, Maya uttered a phrase I thought I would never live to hear escape from her mouth: “Mom and Dad,” she said, “these have been the best four months of my life.” I wanted to cry—or at least run and get a tape recorder. This is quite a departure from the dramatic scene of last September when, interestingly also in a Mexican restaurant (the Balaban/Wergeles equivalent to comfort food), we told the kids of our plans for this trip and she burst into tears. She then proceeded to weep for three solid days, refusing to speak to us except to procure the necessities of life (and then, practically only if a matter of life and death).

This moment at Nacho Mamas prompted me to pause for a moment and reflect a bit on what we have done over the past four months and how this trip has impacted our family. While I knew this trip would give our family a chance to be together in a way that we rarely have had the privilege to enjoy in the midst of our impossibly hectic lives, I don’t think I understood how profound the effect would be on our basic family structure and the way in which we function together. I have always felt exceedingly blessed to be part of this family and have felt some significant measure of pride in helping to create it despite the somewhat challenging odds I faced. What I did not realize was how many pleasures of this family I had missed while drowning in a sea of work, volunteer, school, obligations and extracurricular activities. I realized that even when we are all together at home, we tend to retreat to our separate corners and even when we are socializing with other families, the kids quickly disappear and leave the adults to their own “boring” conversations. This life “timeout” has allowed us to develop into a strong family unit and to discover in each other qualities and attributes that we didn’t even know existed and created a depth of relationships that we did not anticipate.

Each of our relationships has improved. Adam and I have become a more cohesive unit and have found a wonderful rhythm together as we wend our way through the logistics, challenges and surprises of the trip. Adam and I have become closer to each of our girls both separately and together. We have also noticed interesting patterns that have probably always existed, but are more pronounced because of the nature of this trip. For example, we have all observed that when the four of us are walking together Emma is always holding Adam’s hand, while Maya always gravitates to me. However, the most dramatic change has been the relationship between the girls. While our girls always loved each other and mostly got along, their relationship was laden with a significant dose of sibling bickering and sniping. Granted, Adam and I have a pretty low tolerance for this sort of thing, but we always noted that Maya reserved her small but wicked mean streak for her sister. This had already diminished significantly during the past four months—but it was still present enough to tick us off at least once or twice a day. After a particularly difficult day with the girls bickering on the bus from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh, I exploded at them. I was screaming while explaining how completely disheartening it was to hear them argue over who had the better view of the computer (when watching Freaks and Geeks) when we had just driven through the most desperate poverty I had ever witnessed. When I gained my composure, I more calmly discussed with them the many reasons for this trip and tried to impress upon them why arguing over such insignificant things made me think they were really missing the point. Furthermore, as sisters they should be each others’ allies not adversaries. By the end, we were all in tears and the girls locked themselves in their hotel room where they spent the better part of an hour hashing things out among themselves. The emerged contrite and seemed to have turned some sort of a corner. That night at dinner, in what in retrospect was a stroke of minor genius (albeit lifted from Ed and Wendy and the book One Year Off), we instituted a rule that for every two days they go without arguing they would each get an additional dollar toward souvenirs. Adam and I felt our life savings (such as it is after 4 months of unemployment and globetrotting) was safe. But we may have been happily mistaken.

The combination of these two events—my tantrum and the bribe—seemed to have had a profound effect on their behavior toward one another. To our shock and amazement before we knew it, they had gone for two weeks without a cross word between them (at least one that we observed). At first, their turnabout was clearly motivated by their pecuniary interest. We were both overjoyed and a little horrified that their crass desire for more useless tchotkes seemed to be the inspiration behind all of this good will and that we had come up with such strikingly capitalist ploy in the midst of communist South East Asia (of course, they have all moved to a market economies, so perhaps even they would approve.) But who were we to thwart this peaceful détente for some highfalutin principles? After another week of bliss, our cynical side was getting the best of us, and we decided to have a chat. What we learned was that their seemingly angelic behavior was initially economically motivated. However, after several days, they started to realize how much more pleasant life can be when they are able to refrain from bickering over something insignificant and work hard at getting along (a lesson from which Adam and I have benefited as well). In the midst of all this, they seemed to discover in each other best friends that they were not aware they had. Maya began to notice Emma’s innate charm and appeal and Emma’s love and idolization for Maya was finally being reciprocated. There have certainly been unpleasant moments since—especially when my mom arrived in Bali and they were competing for her attention--but really precious few, especially given the 24/7 nature of our experience together. This has truly been one of the many unexpected joys of this trip. And frankly, we are getting a little nervous about our life savings…