Rollercoaster

I don’t know what it is about theme parks, but they always seem to go hand in hand with emotional disaster. The first time was Legoland, back when the kids were tiny. I was really excited to take them, and we were due to meet my sister and her husband, who lived nearby in Reading. In the car, she rang and told me he was leaving her and it rather spoiled the day. She thinks it spoiled her life, but in hindsight, he was a bit of a prick.

We never went back but we did just get to Disneyworld. A combination of a PPI payment and a stubborn grandparent who didn’t fancy London in February. So out we schelpped, 12 week old infant in tow, hoping to make the best of it. But my postpartum brain perceived the noise, heat, crowds, jolting motion and fast moving attractions as threats and fared badly, after 3 months’ broken nights with a 5 hour time shift and hellish outbound flight. When Ma let me down (or rather the hire car company delayed her by half hour) and she called me in a flap, the last year of pent up anxiety unleashed in a flood and I all but had a breakdown, convinced I was ruining a holiday that cost me more than I often earned in a year; my children’s memories of it; that I’d lost their trust due to my emotional outbursts and that I was breaking poor old Tom, who valiantly kept on his Disney face in the face of dollar parity, eyewateringly expensive food, parking, you name it; but most of all my watery eyes, that kept leaking despite the sun and enforced fun. It wasn’t much fun. Still the pictures look good.

We returned home, thankfully, with a baby who slept all the flight, due to a combination of exhaustion and melatonin (which you can buy in the States) in my milk. She seemed to slot more or less back into routine as unscathed as one can hope having exposed her tiny unvaccinated self to a culture intent on undoing scientific advancements. One day back, and I was starting to feel better. But then the call. My sister, now I thought, happily married with two gorgeous girls I love like my own, is leaving her nice, stable husband and with it, the only family I can count on except mine are slipping away again.