“Isn’t this great, Nick?” I said as we walked on a path deeper into the forest, where everything became bigger and quieter. I expected that at any moment my nephew would begin jumping up and down from excitement as he cried out in joy, “This is the best place I’ve ever been! Thank you, Aunt Laurie! I love these trees! They are huge! I now have changed my mind and no longer want to be a football player; I want to be a dendrologist, which is a scientist who studies trees, and devote my life to preserving and studying these magnificent, beautiful works of nature! You have changed my life, Aunt Laurie, you have changed my life!”
“This is pretty cool,” my husband said as he gently shook Nick by the shoulders from behind.
“Yeah, it’s okay,” he said.
“It’s okay?” I said, laughing at Nick’s coolness toward it all. “These are the biggest trees in the world. Some of them are thousands of years old.”
“The knight in my book is a thousand years old, and he just cast a spell so he can escape a ship he’s being held captive on by a king who used to be good but is now a warlord, so I’d like to see what happens with that, you know,” he replied as he shrugged, hands in his pockets.
“Oh” was the only thing I could think of to say.
“You know, they filmed part of Return of the Jedi here,” my husband added.
“That was before I was born,” Nick said simply. “And my book is sort of more interesting.”
We have three days here, we’ve been in the car all day, and he’s tired, I told myself. Give the kid a break. Let him read his book. Who cares if you just drove eight hours to get here and it’s one of the most amazing things you’ve ever seen? Who cares if he’s not into it right now? We have a ton of other things planned: We’re taking a gondola ride up the side of a mountain, we’re going to the beach, we’re going to drive through the Avenue of the Giants, we’re going to the Sea Lion Caves, and we are going to have fun.
We are going to have fun.
We are going to have fun.
We are going to have fun.
And we did. Nick had fun reading in the backseat of the car as we drove the rest of the way to the cabin we were staying at, I had fun while I ate the rest of my Chex Mix, and my husband had fun thinking to himself.
When we got to the cabin, Nick decided to change into his pajamas and rifled through the backpack my sister had gotten ready for him.
“Aunt Laurie?” he asked after a couple of minutes. “Do you have an extra pair of pajamas? Mom forgot mine.”
“Hmm,” I said. “Well, how about you just sleep in the T-shirt you’re wearing? Would you be okay sleeping in that?”
“Not really,” he said honestly. “Grandma says only hoboes sleep in dirty clothes. Mom forgot my shirts, too. I only have this shirt and three pairs of shorts.”
I was shocked. While I wouldn’t be surprised if she forgot to pack a toothbrush or comb, it was rather unlike my sister to forget to pack something like clothes. Any of them. While Nick was well stocked on socks and underwear, everything else was missing.
“Are you sure?” I asked my nephew. “You checked everywhere?”
“Yep,” he said, nodding.
“Where did she think we were going that you wouldn’t need shirts?” I asked aloud. “Alabama?”
I finally talked him into sleeping in the shirt he was wearing—but not before much, much arm-twisting and the agreement that we would get him some new clothes the next day, although I had no idea where. We were almost in the middle of nowhere, and the only thing separating us from actual nowhere was a small grocery store across the street that, while offering live bait and bags of microwave pork rinds, thankfully did not offer apparel of any sort.
Being that the cabin had one bedroom and a small futon in the living room, I gave Nick the choice of whether he wanted to sleep on the futon by himself or bunk with me in the bedroom, and he chose the latter. Even though he was eleven, sleeping in a strange place without either of his parents might be a little bit unnerving, I realized, so I decided not to make a big deal out of it. I was, however, touched that I got to hang on to the last moments of Nick’s kiddom, of his not wanting to be quite so independent, and I was happy that those moments weren’t all gone, not just yet. We got ready for bed, Nick brushed his teeth, I got my sleep mask and earplugs out, and we all called out good night to one another.
Nicholas got under the covers, snuggled up to the pillow, and I was going to turn the TV off, but I couldn’t find the remote control.
“Where’s the remote?” I asked him.
“I have it,” he said, looking at me. “I need the TV on to fall asleep.”
“Are you sure?” I asked, not finding any joy in that news. “Don’t you want to just give it a shot?”
He shrugged. “Not really,” he replied. “That’s why I picked this room with the TV. Because, you know, I thought the futon looked fun.”
“Does it have to be ESPN?” I asked. “Could we at least put it on Bravo?”
“I don’t watch any shows on Bravo. It’s a lady channel,” he said decidedly, and without much of a response, I caved.
Remarkably, though, I fell asleep pretty quickly, because the next thing I remember was that someone with Chex Mix breath was shaking me.
“Aunt Laurie,” I heard. “Aunt Laurie.”
I jolted awake and my eyes flew open immediately.
“What’s the matter?” I said, ripping my face mask off and plucking out my earplugs as a shot of adrenaline surged through my system. “What happened?”
Nicholas slowly and cautiously pointed to the ceiling. “I saw a spider,” he whispered.
“Are you sure?” I whispered back wearily, my heart still pounding in my throat. “I bet it was just a shadow, honey. Or a fly. I bet it was a fly.”
He shook his head. “I saw lots of legs,” he confirmed. “Eight. I counted them.”
“This is what happens when you keep the TV on,” I whispered back as I got out of bed and turned the light on. “When it’s dark you don’t know that spiders are crawling above you.”
But I looked at the ceiling and didn’t see a thing, and certainly not a big enough spider whose legs could be counted by a little boy through the flickering light of basketball highlights.
“Right there,” Nick said, pointing to a teeny spot on the ceiling on the far, far side of the room.
“That?” I said as I got closer to it, realizing I’d had pimples bigger than the fearful creature. “Now I know why your clothes are missing: Your mother packed your night-vision binoculars instead. You counted the legs on that?”
Nicholas nodded. “Eight. That’s what qualifies them as arachnids.”
“Nick, it looks like a Skittle from here,” I argued, grabbing a shoe and climbing onto a chair to reach the terrifying offender.
“A Skittle wouldn’t crawl in my ear or into my mouth and lay eggs,” he countered, as I whacked the tiny spider and grabbed the carcass in a tissue.
“Is it all right if I flush this, or did you need to incinerate it?” I asked.
“I think you’re overreacting,” he informed me.
“Oh,” I said. “Oh. Well, let’s see who overreacts when they have to wear the same hobo shirt until their mother gets here with her credit card.”
The next morning we headed out to the Trees of Mystery, a roadside attraction featuring a mile-long trail through the redwoods called the Kingdom of Trees that is “devoted to the myth and mythology of Paul Bunyan.” There is also a restaurant, a gift shop, the sky gondola, and a forty-nine-foot-tall figure of Paul Bunyan and a giant Babe the Blue Ox, complete with Babe the Blue Ox giant “adornments hanging from the lower torso,” shall we say.
“Nick,” I said excitedly. “Go stand underneath Babe and let me get a picture.”
He went over obediently, stood under Babe, and smiled.
“That’s great!” I yelled. “Now just reach one hand up and touch the balloons.”
“Those aren’t balloons, Aunt Lauri
e,” Nicholas told me.
“Yes they are,” I insisted. “They just don’t have strings, because people would trip on them. But they are balloons.”
“I don’t want to touch the blue balls, Aunt Laurie,” Nicholas yelled back.
“It’s concrete,” I shouted in return. “They’re not real!”
“Please don’t make me touch the blue balls, Aunt Laurie,” he said. “I don’t want to touch the blue balls!”
“Every other kid in this parking lot has touched the blue balls and let his parents take a picture of it,” I pleaded. “I promise, when you get into college this will be hilarious.”
“My mom wouldn’t make me touch the blue balls,” he said forcefully.
“Your mother would be over there holding your hands to them,” I told him. “When you were three, she took a video of Goofy flipping off the Mad Hatter while you were eating pancakes at Disneyland. I bet she makes this the wallpaper on her computer. Smile like you’re having fun!”
Nicholas reluctantly raised one hand above his head and barely grazed the adornments with his fingertips, his mouth curled into a frown.
“Smile like you’re having fun!” I yelled. “There’s a bunch of other kids behind you waiting to touch Babe’s balls!”
I clicked anyway. It will be hilarious when he goes to college.
In the gift shop, we picked out several new T-shirts for Nicholas, and I will say I was disappointed when he chose the Paul Bunyan over the Babe shirt, although I did talk him into one with a profile of Bigfoot on it. We then took the sky gondola up the mountain, through the canopy of the redwoods, all the way to the top, so high we could see the ocean.
“Are we going to go to the beach?” Nick asked.
“Sure,” my husband replied. “We could go there right after we get back to the car if you like.”
“Really?” my nephew said, looking very excited.
“Of course,” I said as I shrugged. “Provided that, before we get to the car, you touch the balls again, but with a smile this time.”
Heading west in the car, I figured it was the optimum time to impart some words of warning.
“Now, a couple of weeks ago when we went to the coast, the beach had pieces of jellyfish scattered all over it,” I told Nick, because the last thing I wanted was for him to poke around at some beach blob and get it all angry. “Don’t touch it. I don’t want you poking it with a stick, I don’t want you covering it with sand, I just want you to ignore it like it was your younger brother.”
“Okay, but why?” he asked.
“Jellyfish are one of the deadliest animals on earth,” I explained. “If you think touching concrete testes was bad, that’s nothing compared to what a jellyfish will do to you. So just do not touch it. Okay? Are we clear?”
“We are clear,” he agreed.
As we pulled into the parking lot that was parallel to the beach, Nick’s face lit up.
“Wow, I can’t believe the ocean is right there,” he said as we got out of the car, and he dashed into the sand, kicking it up into the air behind him and running toward the surf. My husband and I followed behind, picking up rocks, pushing sand around with our feet, and examining blobs of jellyfish from a distance. I saw Nick stop and stand, watching the waves come in, and when one on the large side was about to hit, I noticed that Nick wasn’t moving. He was just standing there, almost like he was hypnotized.
“Nicholas!” I screamed, trying to shout over the grind of the surf. “Nicholas, run! Run!”
But he either didn’t hear me or was ignoring me, and that wave charged at him like a bull. It broke on the beach, feet from him, and then kept coming until Nick was thigh-high in water, and still he continued to do nothing but stand still.
He waited until the wave drained away before he turned around and started back up the beach, but by that time my husband and I were almost to him. He was soaking wet from the waist down.
“Nick!” I cried when I got to him. “Didn’t you hear us screaming to run? Why did you just stand there? Why didn’t you move?”
“My shoes got covered in sand when I ran,” he said, water dripping from his shorts. “I wanted to wash them off.”
“You were trying to clean your shoes off in the ocean?” my husband laughed.
“Nick, you are sopping wet,” I said, thinking that it was a good thing we were starting our trip to the Sea Lion Caves that day and had all of our stuff packed in the car. “And, by the way, your strategy to clean your shoes is a little bit off.”
The shoes were caked with sand, but it hardly mattered since they were waterlogged with seawater; with every step my nephew took, the shoes oozed and chunks of sand crumbled off.
After Nick changed into a new pair of shorts and his Paul Bunyan shirt in the backseat, we headed toward Oregon with Nick’s wet clothes and spongy shoes under the hatchback.
“I can’t believe that just when we bought you replacement shirts, you ruined your shoes,” I said. “Those will take days to dry out.”
“I can wear them,” Nicholas said hopefully. “I’ll just wear two pairs of socks.”
“Sure, and your mother will show up and we can show her your delightful case of trench foot,” I replied, but I did remember seeing a Target on our way down. I was hoping we would get to it before we had to stop somewhere for lunch and were turned away with a scowl and a finger pointing to the sign that said NO SHIRT, NO SHOES, NO SERVICE. My theory was that we were at a hearty 50 percent, because we still hadn’t lost our standing from earlier in the morning when we had shoes but no shirt. To avoid that scenario, we pulled into a KFC drive-through where my nephew ordered a two-piece meal, plus popcorn chicken, plus an extra biscuit. With all of the food he was eating and the necessity of replacing his entire wardrobe, I wasn’t sure how much longer our vacation funds were going to last.
Thankfully, an hour later we approached the Target, pulled into the lot, and parked. My husband and I got out of the car, though Nicholas stayed put. I opened the back door and looked at him while he looked at me.
“Well …?” I asked. “Would you like to join us as we buy you new shoes?”
“Are you going to carry me?” he asked. “I only have socks on.”
“Kids your age in Africa are parents already,” I replied. “No, we are not going to carry you. You are going to walk in there with your socks on and we’re going to pretend that nothing is wrong. We’re a Walmart family that ended up at the wrong giant retailer because Pappy used a homemade GPS called a divining rod.”
And despite the fact that that was my original plan, I couldn’t help but blurt out, sometimes in an inappropriate volume, “I can’t believe you thought the ocean would wash your shoes off for you. I just can’t believe it,” every time we passed another person who had children with them who sported footwear.
We found the shoe aisle, and Nick naturally gravitated toward the most expensive pair, like we were on a reality makeover show.
“We’re going to stay in the three-digit range,” I reminded him. “You pick out a nice pair someone in India younger than you made with their tiny, skillful hands.”
Nick had just tried on a pair of shoes that he liked when he looked at me and said, “Aunt Laurie, I don’t feel very well.”
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“I have a headache and I think my stomach hurts,” he said, looking despondent. “I think I might throw up.”
“Oh no,” I said in a panic to my husband, and then turned back to Nicholas. “Do you need to go to the bathroom? Are you really going to throw up? If you’re going to throw up, make sure to do it on the aisle and not the rack of shoes, okay? Do we need to carry you now?”
“I bet it’s the whole chicken and the gallon of grease he just ate,” my husband said.
“It’s not,” Nick said, shaking his head. “I think it’s because of the jellyfish.”
“What,” I said, looking at my nephew. “Jellyfish?”
“The jellyfish on the beach,?
?? he said, looking down.
“You did not touch a jellyfish after what I told you in the car,” I said quietly. “What did I tell you?”
“That it’s the third-deadliest animal on the planet and causes a hundred deaths per year, and I have a better chance of surviving a hug from a polar bear and an encounter with a saltwater crocodile than I do from messing with a jellyfish,” he murmured. “And I touched one.”
“Explain to me what you did,” I said calmly.
Now, because I saw that there was not a whole jellyfish on the beach and just clumps of what used to be jellyfish, I really doubted that Nicholas had been stung by a dead pile of goo, but he was an eleven-year-old boy and they will put a hand on anything, especially if it looks like a giant booger. So I tried to remain calm, tried not to believe my own lie that touching a jellyfish was going to kill my nephew.
“I saw a jiggly thing on the beach, and you said not to touch it with a stick, so I kicked it with my shoe,” he confessed.
“Okay,” I said, taking a deep breath. “And then?”
“And then I thought that I was going to die, so that’s when I went and washed the shoe in the ocean, to get the deadly poison off so my leg didn’t soak it up,” he finished.
“And that’s it?” I asked.
“That’s it; then we went back to the car,” he said, terrified. “I have Jellyfish Fever, don’t I?”
“No,” I replied.
“But I’m pretty sure I do,” he told me, looking worried.
“Nicholas, you do not have Jellyfish Fever,” I said firmly. “There is no such thing.”
“Are you sure?” he said. “Because I’m pretty sure I feel like I have it. My insides feel that way. Sort of jiggly.”
“You don’t,” I assured him. “Maybe when we get back to my house we’ll rent Food, Inc., and you’ll understand why your insides feel like they are liquefying. Value Meal Plus Popcorn Chicken and Biscuit Fever is what you have, and it’s very similar.”
“Are you sure I’m not going to die?” he asked again.
“I’m sure,” I reassured him. “I wouldn’t lie to you. Again.”
“I like the shoes,” he said, admiring his feet. “I don’t think I could make these.”