Category / bahamas

by Kelly Mattei

Making Memories

Making memories.

Yesterday, my daughter and I returned home from a trip to the Bahamas. We went with my college friend and her daughter. Our daughters were born about 17 months apart; her daughter is 21, and mine is almost 20. Our girls go to the same college and have been friends since they were born, but it had been a while since we had vacationed together. It was time to make new memories.

And we did.

Our friends flew out of Atlanta, and we flew out of Charlotte, so we all met at the hotel. My daughter and I arrived several hours late, but it was fine, because we got there safely, and we got there in time for dinner.

We had all sorts of plans for making special memories. We just knew we would celebrate our birthdays each night at the different restaurants where we had reservations. We thought we would likely spend some time on the beach drinking cocktails out of coconuts or pineapples. Oh, we had plans…but we were flexible.

And nothing happened the way we thought it would. In fact, the things we are most likely to remember were completely unplanned…just like always. Sure, we enjoyed our planned dinner on the first night. We even celebrated my friend’s daughter’s birthday. We also overate, so when the staff came out singing Happy Birthday, we didn’t even want dessert. We enjoyed the fountain light show. We spent time in the casino. We made new friends. Lots of the time, the girls did their own thing while we (the moms) just lounged by/in the pool all day. At 56, I’m just not good about baking in the sun for hours in tropical weather. Give me a cocktail and a pool instead…so that’s where we spent our days. The girls found a more “happening” pool (no old people!) to spend their days, and we were so glad they were having fun and making memories together.

We canceled two of our dinner reservations, because the girls made other plans. We (the moms) didn’t mind one bit. And on the last full day, the girls hung out with us in our pool cabana and in the pool. I think they were tired from the day before. We made some great memories laughing in the pool and chatting over cocktails with our girls, since they are both of legal drinking age in the Bahamas.

But the funniest memory we made on the whole trip was completely unplanned…and it was a doozy! In fact, I’m guessing I don’t know many people who can say they share this memory. Lots of people can say they have visited the Bahamas. Lots of people can say they dined at the restaurants and spent time in the casinos. Lots of people can say they met interesting people on vacation. Lots of people can say they got lots of rest or stayed out all night.

How many people can say their taxi ran out of gas on the way back to the airport in Nassau?

Well, we can! We hopped in a cab at the resort, and about five minutes later, the car swerved a little. Then it swerved again. I looked at my daughter, who was sitting next to me in the back seat. She looked confused too. And then our taxi driver said, “I think we are having a fuel problem.” A fuel problem? Like running out of gas?!?! Yep…she got us off the road just in time to run out of gas. The driver hopped out and started trying to flag down other cars, and my friend’s daughter looked at the dash. She said, “All the lights on the dash are on! Should we get out of the car? Or does that just mean we ran out of gas? Is that what happens when you run out of gas?” I replied, “I don’t know! I’ve never run out of gas!” We all laughed. My brain was working, and I knew, if all else failed, I could call my friend who works at the Nassau airport, and she could send a taxi for us, but our driver flagged one down pretty quickly. Crisis averted.

We got out of the taxi and loaded our bags in the other taxi, and we were on our way. The original taxi driver was with us, and she was apologizing profusely. I told her not to worry…we had just made a new memory!

And you know what? It’s true. We will likely remember running out of gas on the way to the airport for the rest of our lives.

Sometimes, a minor crisis becomes a funny memory, and that’s what happened here.

by Kelly Mattei

She’s Returning to College

She’s returning to college.

Our daughter is returning to college for the second semester of her freshman year. In just 36 hours, our blissful month of having her under our roof will end. She and my husband will load up her car and start the 450 mile drive back to her university. She will drop him off at the airport before she goes to her dorm. He will fly home…without her.

And our house will be eerily quiet…again. It will be as quiet as it has been for the past few months, since we dropped her off in August. That dorm move-in is a distant memory now. Remember all the planning? Remember all the boxes of dorm supplies and decor stacked up in my foyer? I can hardly remember it now.

She survived first semester. With medical emergencies, the flu, late nights, lots of fun, lots of new friends…she survived. Not only did she survive, she thrived. Our girl was made for the big college atmosphere. It’s her happy place, for the most part. Don’t get me wrong; there were occasional tears. If you have a child leaving for college next fall, just know there will be tears. Sometimes they just have to get through the tears to get to the good stuff. I have told our daughter that in many late night phone conversations. If we didn’t have the bad, we wouldn’t appreciate the good. It’s absolutely true. The good seems so much better after you experience the bad. If your child calls you crying from college, remind them and yourself of that.

I will be having to remind myself of that over the next few weeks, as we adjust to a quiet house again.

Our house has felt like our house again for the past month, while our girl has been home. We had her friends in and out of the house at all hours. Many times, I was up at 2am, making grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup for a gaggle of friends. I’m not complaining; I loved every minute of it. Some nights, I was picking her up from a friend’s house or a party in the wee hours of the morning. After the murders at the University of Idaho, I wasn’t real keen on her taking an Uber. That horrible crime was a reminder that a background check is just a check of what someone hasn’t been caught doing or hasn’t done yet. It’s scary to think young girls all over the country hop into the car with strangers all the time, right? So while our daughter was in Charlotte, I was her personal Uber driver if she needed me. *Say a prayer for the families of those University of Idaho students.*

Did my husband love the late nights? No. It drives him crazy to have to stay up past midnight. He leads a very structured life, and if the timing gets messed up, he’s not happy. I’m a total vampire who flies by the seat of my pants, so in my world, I love the chaos. I love spontaneity. I love getting in the car at 1:30am to pick up our daughter and friends to bring them back to our house. I love standing in the kitchen, in my pajamas and robe, preparing food for them after they get here. And I’m going to miss it.

Will we get to bed at a reasonable hour every night? Yes. Will the amount of laundry I have to do decrease exponentially? Yes. But honestly, I will miss the extra laundry. I will miss watching the clock as we wait for her to come home. I will miss the late night talks in her room. I will miss watching football games with her.

I will miss her.

Thank God we have some vacations coming up soon, so we won’t be in this quiet house. Before we know it, she will come home for a visit. If she doesn’t, chances are I will hop on a plane and go see her one weekend soon…just because I miss her. She’ll need a Mama hug, and I’ll need to see her face to make sure she’s OK.

I keep reminding myself that in just four short months, she will be home for summer. We will take mother/daughter trips again. She will likely want to visit friends in different cities, and that’s OK too. We will just be happy to have her here when we can. Just having that to look forward to will keep us going. Well, that and some fun trips.

Meet us in the Bahamas, but bring your own snorkel gear!

by Kelly Mattei

I’m Such a Smart Empty-Nester

I’m such a smart empty-nester!

Want me to tell you how much I know about empty nesting? Here’s how smart I am: I know absolutely nothing…nada…diddly. But the fact that I realize I know nothing about it makes me absolutely brilliant.

Remember when your kids were toddlers? You had survived the whole newborn and infancy thing, and so you felt pretty confident going into toddlerhood? And then, BAM…your kid knocked you right back into reality with a tantrum…or climbing up the stairs on the outside of the rail (it happened)…or pushed another kid down…or hurled a plate of food across the room.

Well, empty-nesting is a lot like that. Just when you move your kid into his/her new dorm or apartment, you think, “Wow! I got this! I am a pro! My kid is officially launched into adulthood, and my life is my own!”

Wrong…wrong…wrong.

What they forgot to tell you when you brought that child into the world is that your life will never be your own…never, ever again.

My husband and I were stupid enough to think we would get our daughter moved into college, and everything would be rainbows and confetti afterward. Nope. We could not have been more wrong. Soon after we dropped her off, she developed an infection where she had a heel blister, and because the doctor was afraid it would move into her Achilles’ tendon, she had to get an antibiotic injection, take oral antibiotics, and use a topical gel. Crisis averted. That was our first gut punch letting us know how stupid we are.

Soon thereafter, we went on vacation to the Bahamas thinking everything was great. We came home, and I had gallbladder surgery. I took a week to recover, and then, I went on a cruise with a friend from my college days. We had a great time. And then…the last night of the cruise, I received a call that our daughter had been in a car accident. Everything ended up being fine, but wow! Things were not going as expected.

That was just last weekend.

My husband and I had planned to leave this Tuesday to go to the Bahamas again but canceled the trip when we received a call that the resort restaurants were closed till November 1. At first, I was annoyed, but then it looked like Hurricane Fiona was going to move through the Bahamas this upcoming week, and I was glad we had canceled.

Here is the thing: we thought empty-nesting would be a walk in the park, but every plan we have made has been changed somewhere along the way. So I finally realized something: the only constant is change.

If you want to have a good empty-nesting experience, prepare to be flexible.

If you want to have a good empty-nesting experience, prepare to be flexible. That vacation you have planned? It might not happen, and if it does, you might have to come home early to help your newly launched child with a problem. Sleeping well at night? Don’t expect it to last. You’re likely to get at least one jarring late night call. Think you know where your college-age kid is all the time? Bahahahahaha…think again.

Here is how you will know you are a smart empty nester…

You will know you are a smart empty-nester when you realize and can admit to all your friends that you have no idea what you are doing and you likely won’t ever know. If we could have just admitted this freely when our kids were toddlers, we would be a lot better off. If I could have just said all along that I am learning on the job (as a parent), and I am an absolute novice, I would have looked like the smartest parent in the history of the world.

As it is, I had to learn that I don’t know a damn thing.

If you’re going to be an empty-nester soon, hold onto your hat. Enjoy the ride, because you will never know what is around the corner…just like when your kids were infants, toddlers, elementary school age, middle schoolers, and high school students. Admit it. You were and still are as clueless as I am.

The sooner you can admit it, the smarter you are.

by Kelly Mattei

Reminds Me of My Mother

Reminds me of my mother.

I’m on vacation. When our daughter told us she was going to Nantucket for a few days in July, my husband and I looked at each other and said, “Let’s go somewhere!” We promptly booked a getaway to the Bahamas.

And here we are. We woke up at 3:45 this morning to make our way to Charlotte-Douglas International Airport to start a rare trip without our daughter. The last time we vacationed without her, she was hiking her way across Iceland with a teenage tour group. That time, we traveled to Miami for a few days.

We arrived on the island at about noon today. Because we are staying in a villa, we went straight to the grocery store to get the necessities and some snacks. And then…because it seemed like we had been awake forever, we took a quick nap before going for a three-mile walk along the beach and stopping for dinner at a beachside restaurant along the way. It was a great afternoon.

But that’s not what reminded me of my mother.

After we returned to the villa, my husband took a shower in one bathroom while I took one in the other bathroom. I think I might do this in the wrong order, but I always remove my makeup before getting in the shower. And when I get out, I repeat the makeup remover process again.

I don’t use some fancy makeup remover. All my adult life, I have used Pond’s Cold Cream to remove my makeup. I have tried lots of the fancier, more expensive products over the years, but I have never found anything that removes makeup more easily for me than Pond’s.

When I’m home, I don’t notice the scent of Pond’s Cold Cream, but tonight, for some reason, in a villa in the Bahamas, I noticed the scent. And it smelled like my mother. Where do you think I got the idea to use Cold Cream to remove makeup? Yep…from my mother. I remember, as a little girl, watching her slather cold cream on her face and thinking it was so funny to see her with her face caked in it. She would slowly wipe the cold cream from her face to reveal a makeup free look. And the scent of cold cream often lingered on her face.

Often, I will reapply a little cold cream and wipe down my face one more time before bed, just because it moisturizes my skin and smells clean to me. Tonight was one of those nights. I am sitting in bed listening to the talk show my husband has on his computer. I’m wearing my green and white striped pajamas from my favorite hotel. They feel crisp and clean, and my face feels smooth and clean…and smells like my mother. It’s a good memory for me.

If mother were still alive, she would laugh at the fact that the scent of Pond’s Cold Cream makes me think of her. But I like to think she would be flattered too. She would think it is sweet that I have childhood memories of watching her slathering her face with cold cream.

I’m not sure why being in a different place brought out the scent, but I’m glad it did. I like thinking of my mother. And now I will pay more attention to the scent every time I use Pond’s Cold Cream.

It reminds me of my mother…