Senior Trip 0.5
It was supposed to be a dream—an introverted, tired mom's dream. We’d been planning it for months. Our oldest son, George will be graduating high school in June, and Logan and I wanted to take him on a special senior trip—just the three of us, doing a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing.
George picked snowboarding. In Canada. From a helicopter. Logan, of course, was completely on board with the idea. And believe it or not, so was I. Because, you see, while the boys were gone snowboarding each day, my plan was to stay behind in the cozy Airbnb, watching movies, reading historical novels, and eating peanut butter cups. It was truly my ideal vacation. All of us were giddy with excitement.
Two days before the trip, there was a snowboarding competition at White Pass Ski Area that George was dying to participate in.
“You know how fate works, right?” I said when he asked if he could go. “You’re going to break your collarbone and miss out on the once-in-a-lifetime chance to go heli boarding. Are you willing to risk it?”
He’s 17. Of course he was willing to risk it. And, to be fair, if George heeded every warning of impending disaster that I gave him, he would literally never leave the house. So, he went. And—you guessed it—he broke his collarbone.
Never have you seen a boy more regretful and disappointed than George was on that day. Logan and I were likewise devastated, both for George and for ourselves. It was a big bummer sandwich all around.
“Now what?” we wondered. I had spent several hours over the previous weeks arranging rides, child care, and meals so our other kids would be taken care of while we were gone. The thought of all of that going to waste—or possibly having to do it all over again if we postponed the senior trip—made me want to weep.
What’s more, Logan had gotten off an entire week of work. And as we looked at our schedule for the upcoming months, we doubted we could find another time to fit in an alternate trip. It was either now or never.
For a person like me, coming up with a different trip idea would be a piece of cake. Step one: find a beach. Step 2: sit on the beach and read for five days. But for a person like George, who is only having fun when he’s doing something active, we were in a bit of a pickle. Nothing that could be done with a broken collarbone sounded appealing to him, until finally, Logan remembered that March Madness was starting that week.
“Maybe we could hang out in San Francisco and then go to some March Madness games in Sacramento,” Logan suggested. George’s eyes finally lit up. By 2:00 the following day, we were on a plane to San Francisco.
Come with me now as we mourn for a moment the fact that, instead of being completely alone in a quiet Airbnb watching movies and reading books, I was suddenly thrust into a vacation that consisted of wandering around one of the busiest cities in America and then attending an entire days-worth of basketball games in an auditorium filled with screaming fans. This was definitely not an introverted, tired mom’s dream.
However, this “Senior Trip 0.5” had some perks that the other did not. For starters, I got to spend much more time with George than I would have on the previous version. Logan, George and I hung out from morning till night, touring Alcatraz, wandering through the Winchester Mystery House, walking along the Golden Gate Bridge, eating everything in sight, and playing 38 holes of miniature golf—which George still managed to win, even one-handed.
Even the basketball was fun, although by hour eight, I was pretty much catatonic. George agreed to cheer with me for Princeton (his grandpa’s alma mater) and was glad he did when they beat Arizona in an upset, 59 to 55.
You know that Rolling Stones song that says you can’t always get what you want, but you get what you need? George’s senior trip wasn’t what we expected it to be. But, as he’s about to leave the nest and head out into the world, with chances to be together growing less and less frequent, maybe our time in San Francisco was just what we needed. Maybe it really was this tired mom’s dream.