4: Vacations
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The thing about Hawaii is that before you go, all anybody will say to you is it's paradise. This is literally the word that people use. You know, you tell a friend I'm going to Hawaii, and then it's like you watch the word enter their brain, and the like the sensate thinking part of them goes away, and their eyes start to glaze, and then as if in a dream, like a scene from the Manchurian candidate, they say the word. It's paradise. Welcome WB, Easy Chicago, it's This American Life, I'm Eric Glass. Each week, of course, we choose a theme and invite a variety of writers and performers to tackle that theme, today's program, Nightmare Vacations, stories by Sandra Singlow and David Sedaris, and this question, if an American family can't get along and paradise, what nope is there? I want to go back to a little question, and look at the cool of our ears. I want to see all the characters and when he decided he used to know, so long ago, I hear the old cosplay on the beach at home, no, no, I can hear the old Hawaiian sing, and all the way in a good way, because Hollywood and Hollywood will all come ship, singing back to corner. It's a grand old place, so it's fair to see. So my sisters and nephews fly in from California, my parents fly in from the east coast. I take an early morning plane from O'Hare, I went mainly because I wanted to spend some time with my parents. My dad was just out of the hospital, he'd had emergency surgery, nearly died, and I wanted to hang out with him, you know, try to get along better, feel closer, which, in my family as in many, is not so easy. I brought the pictures of my trip to show you this one. This is the condo we stayed in. You can see palm trees through the windows, that's my sister Karen on the couch with a diet, Coke, good morning America, which I view as the clattering, vapid noise of Satan is on the television, but that's what my parents like, and I wanted to do what they wanted to do. My parents, who I was not a romantic place of ramshackle bungalows and beaches lit by torchlight. In fact, it was a suburban looking condo with overstuffed pastel furniture and pastel hotel art prints framed in the wall in a timeshare community with tennis courts and easy parking and a mall and a grocery store. In short, this was the least exotic possible setting, but when we arrived, my mom got out of the car, looked around the parking lot at the neatly trimmed lawns, and she said the word, paradise. This picture, this is my dad making cereal in the condo, my parents brought their favorite breakfast cereals with them, 10,000 miles to Hawaii. They like the familiar comforts of home, like many people do. In fact, in all sorts of stressful situations, I realized on this trip, I hadn't actually quite put this together. I realized on this trip that in all sorts of stressful situations, what my parents do is that they make themselves comfortable by focusing on creating a comfortable personal space. When my sisters and I moved away to college, my parents comforted themselves by building a new house. When my mom got breast cancer five years ago, they decided to start a major rehab on the house.
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