Field Trip

All the grades at Cope Middle School take a field trip in the spring. The kids look forward to it all year, and, for the most part, it is the first time for many of them to be many miles away for an extended time from their parents. That is, far away without a Grandma and Grandpa or Aunty and Uncle to watch over them. I remember the anxiety I felt when my first child went on his first trip with his middle school. I was a nervous wreck.

But now, being a mom of three, it is now my third child going on the field trip. After running into another anxiety-ridden mom in the grocery store, I told her to not worry so much. Being the world weary and savvy mother of three, I knew our daughters would be just fine. I explained when she would be sending her third child off, she wouldn’t even worry a bit. When she confessed she was following the bus in her dark glasses and unmarked car, I laughed at the fear of a newbie.

I happily helped my daughter plan for her trip. She came home from school and discussed who was sitting near who on the bus. Who she would room with at the hotel. What wonderful places they were discovering together in New Orleans. How she was lucky to get a friendly teacher as the chaperone in her group. She was very excited.

Enjoying her excitement and the calmness I was feeling as a third round mom, it disappointed me that I got a stomach virus the week before her trip. Telling my husband of this strange virus that leaped out of nowhere, he only answered me with a strange smirk. Obviously he cared nothing about my overall health.

And as I assisted my only, wonderful, precious daughter in planning for the same trip away from home that my two big, strong sons had taken, I noticed her happy chatter seemed to affect my really aching head. I really didn’t know what was making my head ache. And a headache along with a stomach virus seemed to point to something very dire that I could be suffering from. I went once again to my husband who gave me that same strange little smile and told me everything would be fine.

Telling him that I was not worried at all about our only daughter going hundreds of miles away with a group of misbehaved teenagers didn’t seem to wipe away that strange little smile. It rather irritated me. I told him I was not stressed at all about her going into a city that had recently spent weeks under nine feet of water and had to be occupied by the army. Not worried at all about prisoners breaking out of Angola to lose themselves among the population of the French Quarter and prey on young, innocent children. Not worried at all about nuclear bombs, or tidal waves, or the Mississippi River breaking its banks, or even the possibilities of an asteroid strike when my sweet, beautiful, little baby girl was so far from where I could assist her.

He obviously had no idea that I must be suffering from a large, growing mass of parasites in my brain just like on Grey’s Anatomy last week. I was very near death with my upset stomach and pounding head, and he was just standing there smiling. However, I did admit to being a tad worried about New Orleans being hit by a freakishly large and off-season hurricane. But that would not cause the pain in my head like this mass of brain eating parasites I was suffering from. I really thought I needed to see Dr. McDreamy.

Reminding me that I had not recently been to the Amazon rainforest to acquire brain eating parasites, and there had never been a hurricane in February in recorded history, he suggested that it was possible I was suffering from nerves of my daughter taking a trip without me. That in two days time I would find myself miraculously healed, and I really shouldn’t have laughed at that mom who was clandestinely following the bus in the unmarked car.

Too agitated to continue to argue with a man that was so obviously clueless to my medical condition, I headed to the phone book to look up neurosurgeons with great hair. And maybe to look up the number of the mom from the grocery store. I just happened to have an extra pair of dark glasses, if she just happened to have room for an extra mom in her unmarked car.