My son Andy met me for coffee in our hotel lobby in New York last week and gave me his usual Ted Talk. I've heard this one before. Lower your expectations. He says it before every vacation, every holiday, every time he steps out his front door. It was even printed on a sign at the last XOXO festival, an annual festival and conference held in Portland, Oregon created and founded by him and Andy McMillan that celebrated independent artists and creators who work online. Apparently it's not just advice for his mother, it's a whole philosophy. He lives by this motto and it works for him. As for me, I’m the Clark Griswold character from the film Christmas Vacation. I don’t just raise my expectations. I make the bar so high it’s impossible to not be disappointed.
The conversation was about our stay in New York. My husband and I both hit some shocking milestone birthdays, him in July and me in August. We started planning our birthdays and decided the best representation of the two of us was a LA/NY theme. It didn’t matter that we had just traveled to New York in late June. We decided to go back and take the family with us, including our grandson’s partner and our other grandson’s best friend. That made the total fourteen, which meant arranging flights from Portland, Los Angeles, and Vancouver, all landing at one hotel in the East Village in Manhattan like it was the easiest thing in the world.
We kicked off the celebration in Los Angeles with a party at a vegan restaurant on Melrose in West Hollywood in their outdoor garden. Sixteen family members, all seated at a long table.
What I pictured: Laughter, fun, good food, good times. Lots of conversations, photographs, and memories made.
What actually happened: Adult grandkids bored, a sick nephew who couldn’t come, complaints about the worst food some of us had ever eaten, flies, and little conversation due to the long table that made it impossible to hear anyone.
But we still had New York.
We planned to kick off the NY celebration on the rooftop bar at our hotel, with a big party the next day on the rooftop of a restaurant in the Flatiron District. We offered meetups for everyone at our favorite pizza joint in the West Village, and breakfast at Russ and Daughters, my husband’s favorite restaurant in New York.
What I pictured: Family on the rooftop drinking margaritas and eating tacos, dinner the next day on the rooftop, a beautiful spot open and airy with views of the city, great food, and ambience. A five-day trip of togetherness that would create memories for years to come and time spent with my husband’s brother and his wife, New Yorkers who we miss terribly. Taking my adult grandson for the best cacio e pepe he’s ever tasted and my husband finally enjoying an authentic Russian bath where he would have deep philosophical conversations with our grandson.
What actually happened: Rooftop bar was 21 and over so two of our grandkids couldn’t come which made us desperate to find somewhere that would take fourteen people. A walk to a bar that would, but had little options for our family that includes vegans and vegetarians. A walk back to the rooftop bar with the over 21 family in a torrential rainstorm. We all looked like we were dragged out of the East River and sat in the bar with our hair and clothes drenched from the rain. The next night, the rooftop restaurant was half closed and very hot with big industrial fans blasting in our faces, a new pop-up menu that nearly everyone hated, my 19-year-old grandchild describing their hanger steak as beef with pie filling on top, my other grandkid, a vegetarian, reading the menu and finding out that all of their cheese is made with rennet, a meat enzyme produced in the stomach of mammals, so he was not going to eat. My four-year-old granddaughter waking up from a nap so terrified and jolted that she screamed bloody murder the entire dinner. An adult grandkid who showed up for our pizza meetup at our favorite spot who said he’d had frozen pizza that was better, and only two people joining us for breakfast, my son and son-in-law.
Our day and night with our New York family that included a visit to an art gallery and a Broadway play was halted when one of them took a fall at Grand Central station on their way to meet us that resulted in a four-day hospital stay. Our little granddaughter who is always pure joy only wanted to stay in the hotel room and play with Legos. The restaurant that everyone on Yelp raved about and claimed that they served their cacio e pepe in a cheese wheel, did not serve it that way. It was plated and served with a live mouse on the side. And the Russian bath? It was nixed because my husband learned that he would have to walk down several slippery steps in a fog of steam, and in his current state of wobbly recovery from a fracture in Mexico, he couldn’t risk it.
Back to my son. His morning talk was intended to gently shake me into reality. To make me understand that my expectations are unrealistic. That fourteen people could never navigate a city together because we all have different likes, dislikes, and tastes. His point is valid.
So why am I like this?
Here comes the childhood again. My father and mother ruined us. Holidays were so over the top that no one could ever replicate what we had. Presents under the Christmas tree would take over the entire living room. Easter baskets included stuffed rabbits bigger than a toddler. Valentine’s Day where boxes of candy were the size of a door. Dad was connected to the mob, and whatever he wanted to get us, he found a way, beg, borrow, or taken straight off the back of a truck in some alley, no receipt, no explanation. And mom? She was just as kind, in a different way. While dad was all about the size and quantity of the gifts, mom came through with gifts from the heart. That item of clothing at the expensive boutique that couldn’t be lifted off the back of a truck. Mom would save her money to buy it for my sister and me, no big announcements, just a quiet and unexpected surprise.
And the food was endless. We’re Italian, so a holiday meal was never just a meal, it was all day sauce with braciole and meatballs the size of your fist, trays of lasagna four layers thick, stuffed artichokes, bread torn instead of cut, and desserts you ate even after you couldn’t imagine anything else in your mouth. Sunday dinners were no exception. No one could ever eat the amount of food served every week.
Togetherness was not an option, it was mandatory.
I’m not sure how I feel about lowering my expectations. It almost feels like I’m giving up, like I’m disappointing my parents by letting go of the legacy they left us. So I go overboard on all of it. All a family member has to do is mention that they want or need something and I’ll make it happen. My sister is no different. Take the gigantic jeweled tiara she just bought me. We were strolling a pricey antique store and I put this thing on, and I felt like a queen wearing it. We laughed and she took photos. We walked out of the store and she handed me a bag. The crown was in it.
The sad part of this story is that the world has moved on without me, and all it’s done is make me ache for what was, knowing it’s never coming back. The adult grandkids have little interest in travel to the places they used to love, like Hawaii and Mexico. When birthdays or holidays roll around, their idea of a great gift is cash.
So I guess I’ll put all my hope in our four-year-old granddaughter who gets excited over Grammy letting her pick out Legos at the Lego store or Grammy’s bag that always has three surprises in it. Maybe I can pass down some small piece of my parents' appetite for going too big. Or maybe I can't, and I'm simply destined to keep setting the bar somewhere near the ceiling and watching everyone else duck under it.
Cue the violins.
LMAO. W.C. Fields (or was it Groucho?) said, "Comedy is tragedy happening to someone else." I feel your suffering, but at least almost all your pains in the ass are still living! Grief -- like life if you are lucky -- is a looong journey. Keep up the good work.