Two children, three cities and 100 degree heat: Operation complete
ENGLAND are in the semi-final and Ireland can’t cope, but in America, where I’ve spent the past fortnight with the children, the Americans are rooting for them. But, like here, what was on most people’s minds was the heat. While Ireland baked in its hottest summer since 1976, the children and I were contending with record temperatures in New York State, with ‘feel temperatures’ (what it actually feels like taking in humidity etc), were at 107 degrees fahrenheit (42 degrees celsius) one day.
The operation, which it has come to be known, involved taking the two children - a six and a four year old - through two airports, Pearson Toronto and Syracuse, New York - a city of around 110,000 people once famous for its salt production where my family live - without ending up in a cage at the border or in a mental home from stress.
Travelling as a single parent with children can be interesting – just have a look on Google to read nightmare scenarios, but we breezed into American airspace and never looked back. Coming from an international family, the annual holidays almost always revolve around travelling to Syracuse, a city I have been visiting ever since I was five years old, stuck in a snowstorm surrounded Logan Airport in Boston for five days, having travelled over on the same plane as the actress Angela Lansbury, but I digress.
So it turned out, once again, that it was great having a second ‘ home’ in America.
And even better to get to share the city of my youth with my children: bringing everything full circle, so to speak.
We three slept in the same room under a whirring fan and awoke to the clack bang of central air conditioning coming to life.
The warm welcome and the warm weather helped temper the effects of jetlag, which had us up at all ours and we enjoyed 11 days catching up with family and friends.
In the past I called the shots when it came to the days’ itineraries, but the glorious daughter had other ideas, producing a daily list about what she wanted to do.
Like us adults she soon became obsessed with the morning weather news bulletins, which were annoyingly on repeat every 15 minutes, in between seemnigly endless ads, buy hey America is Capitlaism writ large by Trump’s pen these days.
We weathered the first few days fine and were relieved by some rain before the onslaught began.
Having spent more summers than not in Syracuse, and been very familiar with shade time, I became concerned that we would have to stay indoors, but as with the snow, (Syracuse is America’s snowiest city), nothing stops the hardened locals from venturing out.
The sprinkler was on several afternoons, something the children loved, and I taught The Little Fella to cycle without stabilisers in the mornings.
We soon found ourselves in a good routine, doing one trip a day somewhere fun and I was able to have a wander around the city a few afternoons for sanity sake.
On one such afternoon I saw a crowd of Americans wearing England jerseys in a German biergarten: ironic considering Independence Day was just around the corner. They were thrilled to see England win, while I was ambivalent; too busy to be concerned about a match. We continued with the fun times across upstate New York, taking in lake beaches and water parks, arriving home exhausted, overwhelmed, but thrilled with having completed Operation Holiday 2018, all three of us safe and sound back home.