Senseless in Seattle

Published in How to Fit a Car Seat on a Camel: and other Misadventures Traveling with Kids, April 29. 2008

edited by Sarah Franklin

EXCERPT

We stood on the Green at Seattle Center like a quartet of limp leaves, slouching in different directions.  It was the last of a nine-day Pacific Northwest family vacation –the kind of forced togetherness that makes a mother realize that her cute little ones are neither cute nor little anymore. All that week, each of us had had a turn where the other three had ganged up on them, and today seemed to be my day to be the outcast.

Simon, my 11-year-old whiny brat of a son, wanted to go on the Space Needle….