Why I'm sick and tired of family road trips | THE MOM STOP

When I think back to the family car trips of my childhood ― the life before smartphones, before internet, before mobile screens of any kind ― I realize how different they were compared to the road trips my children experience.

When I was growing up, we had everything from coloring books with markers in the back seat to a card game of “Go fish” and a cassette tape of funny kids' songs that we’d listen to repeatedly. Often, my younger sister and I would argue, which meant a pillow placed between the two of us, a Berlin Wall of the backseat, which we were told neither of us could cross.

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And then there was the carsickness. I can’t count the number of times that, as a kid in the backseat of the car, I was told to stick my hands out the cracked car window “for air” and to look up at the ceiling. Now, I realize that looking up at the ceiling in a moving vehicle is quite possibly the one thing that could make being carsick worse. But, my mom was only trying to help.

I’m not sure if there is a gene for being motion sick, but if there is, I’ve passed it down to the youngest of my three children.

I’d like to blame the prevalence of screens in our car, and the fact that our 8-year-old is glued to her iPad on most road trips. There have been times, like on a recent drive through South Dakota’s “Needles” drive in Custer State Park, that I confiscated all iPads and phones and told my kids to look at the gorgeous scenery outside the window. After all, we didn’t travel the long distance to look at screens that they could have looked at at home. But I also had another motive: I did not want my youngest child up-chucking in the backseat of the rental car.

Her proclivity for car sickness is so bad that I keep a constant supply of shopping bag “barf bags” in my minivan console, and a steady stock of fast-food napkins in my glove compartment box.

It was on a recent car trip to visit my mom, I heard a moan from the back seat. “Mommy, I don’t feel so good.”

She threw up so many times that we used all but one of the stock of the “barf bags.” Once we arrived at our destination, the sickness went away. But sure enough, two days later, when traveling back home, my youngest child shouted again for a bag. I handed it to her andshe got sick again.

We were driving through a two-hour stretch of two-lane road, surrounded by pines where there was no civilization in sight. While I never litter, I also couldn’t stomach the smell of vomit for longer than five minutes, and begged my husband to pull over so I could throw the bag out. But he refused, telling me to wait until the next gas station.

I threatened to throw the bag out of the moving minivan, only then he reasoned it would actually splatter up against the side of the vehicle. And so, it was while holding the bag of warm vomit that our youngest daughter started asking for the bag back. Only, we didn’t have another one.

I had to hand her the fairly full barf bag, still in my hand.

As I looked at the back seat, she promptly started getting sick in the bag again. Only, the cheaply-made plastic shopping bag could hold no more. The bag burst at its seam, pouring vomit all over my daughter and all over the back seat.

The smell was too much.

It was then that I started gagging, so much so that I could not stop. I quickly rolled down the car window to stick my own head out of the moving vehicle, getting sick as our minivan sped down the two-lane highway in the middle of nowhere.

As luck would have it, we were within a few miles of a gas station. And as we stopped, my husband bought a roll of paper towels, some Lysol and a car air-freshener spray. He got to work cleaning up the back seat, the outside of the passenger door and our daughter. But while our youngest child quickly recovered, I felt sick for the remainder of the ride. And even now, when I get into my minivan, I smell the odd odor of Lysol, a sickly sweet vanilla air freshener, and the scent of days-old, warmed-over vomit.

And that makes me want to get sick, all over again. Here’s to no more road trips, any time soon.

Lydia Seabol Avant writes The Mom Stop for The Tuscaloosa News. Reach her at momstopcolumn@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Why I'm sick and tired of family road trips | THE MOM STOP