Mama Needs a New Pair of Shoes

We almost didn't make it to BlogHer this year. First there was the no-small-matter of the sold-out tickets, but then, after a full-conference pass materialized courtesy of Joy, there was the stomping, trumpeting elephant in the room of having three dozen things we should be spending our dwindling money on instead of crosscountry flights and hotel suites and entrance fees to cocktail parties. Pre-ticket, the tentative plan was to just show up in Chicago anyway and hang out in the lobby grabbing at blogfriends as they passed, using the baby as bait. Deep down, though, I was second-guessing the trip entirely because how stupid was it to spend money we don't have to attend a conference I can't even get into? I hadn't said it out loud to anyone, but I'd pretty much made up my mind to spend that July weekend wallowing at home and trying to avoid BlogHer tags on Flickr. I told myself that saying no in situations like this is what being a grownup was all about.

So when I got the email that a full-price conference ticket was suddenly available on a first-come basis, I actually hesitated. I hesitated so long I feared I was hesitating too long. Prior to that, I'd been up nights sick at the thought of missing this year's conference--the one I'd dreamt of attending since the 2006 conference at which Mom-101 and Her Bad Mother spoke words of comfort that, at twenty-six, I still had plenty of time to have a baby --and now here I had the baby, and here was the magic ticket and, what the hell?, here was my cursor was hovering over Delete.

In the interest of lowering the trip's price, I considered every option save stowing away in the cargo hold of the plane. There was never the option of my going alone (I can't leave the baby; my boobs don't detach), and although I briefly imagined Wombat and I could go sans Simon, I realized I'd never even make it as far as the airport ticket counter without his help juggling baby and stroller and luggage. Forget public transportation in an unknown city.

I thought again about just scrapping the whole thing. Would I even be able to absorb a panel discussion with a seven-month-old shriek-and-wiggler in tow? Was I being a dick to insist that Simon come along because I was too much of a wimp to do it myself? Was I really willing to make all these sacrifices just so I could show off my baby? Oh God, was that all this was about anyway? Showing off? Blech.

Simon said the decision was mine. He said he would tag along if I wanted him to. He joked that when, years from now, we looked back at losing our house and having to live in a van down by the river, this would stand out as the turning point of our financial downfall. He was joking, but still...I apologized again and again and felt intensely icky about the whole thing. But wasn't it a sign that a ticket had fallen into my lap out of nowhere? Wasn't that the clincher? And wasn't it a happy coincidence that I'd just booked a freelance job that would exactly cover the trip's expenses? Was I supposed to just ignore that? Why wasn't this an easy decision? (Why wasn't the conference in San Francisco every year?)

Then this week BlogHer announced LobbyCon. And it's just the package I'd have designed if they'd asked me. Wombat won't be bored and/or a distraction during panels (because we can't get into them), Simon will have access to all the swag booths he really cleaned up on last year, and we'll all get to hang out as a family at the cocktail parties and afterparties. (I'm praying Wombat will be in good form during the evenings considering we'll be in an earlier time zone.) All this and for less moolah than my full-conference ticket, which I'm having no problem selling to one desperate-turned-lucky blogger. We'll spend the difference buying lunch at corner convenience stores in the downtown Chicago area. More importantly, we'll be eating lunch together instead of me trying to sneak a bite while Wombat's not looking and Simon grabbing something on the go as he vacations alone.

When I think of summer vacations, I think of the summer I drove with my then-boyfriend from Salt Lake City to our new home in Berkeley--over July 4 weekend, in fact, eight years ago (WOW). My mom packed us a picnic lunch, and we stopped along the shore of Lake Tahoe to dig in to pita-pocket sandwiches and baggies of cut vegetables, the same thing I used to find in my Garfield lunchbox on the first day of school. She'd even written me a cheesy mom-note on the napkin.

I remember thinking that this trip was the start of my new life, one that I hoped would include new friends with whom we could take long weekend trips to various glamorous locales. I wrote about it here, three years later, incidentally just before I "saw" Simon for the first time on a ski vacation to Tahoe with a group of friends. It was a dream come true, having ski vacation friends, because prior to that all our California friends had been fixed-income graduate students and destitute nonprofit employees. Despite our being in both demographics ourselves, we were always careful with money and could afford to take vacations here and there, although we almost never went because none of our friends could afford it.

Simon and I were on that ski trip together, back before we were an Us, back before we had a kid and a mortgage (and another mortgage). We're older and wiser and more stable now, and yet we can't really afford a summer vacation to Chicago (which will include a visit to our friends in Oak Park, the aforementioned "rich friends" through whom we met all those years ago.) I've written once before (mere months before we moved into this house, on a July 4 weekend, in fact) that we shouldn't look at life as a ladder but as a web. Now I'm thinking it's more like a dance floor. It's two steps forward and one step back as one becomes two becomes one becomes two becomes three. Swing your partner, do-si-do, and skip to the lou (to the loo?), my darlings. We're going on a vacation, on a family vacation, as a family. Put on your dancing shoes.

wrote Leah at 9:44 AM | Comments (6)