The Exchange, Day 17

“So, Camille, is there anything you won’t ride?” Drops, falls, spins and speeding roller coasters–you like the amusement park? “Bah oui!” he exclaims, happy with our activity choice for the day. “I do eet all.” But when we get to Kings Dominion, fresh-washed in the morning sun and just starting to sizzle for the day, I’m not sure Will and I share his definition of “all.” Here’s my William, busting through the exit gate after each ride to re-up at the entrance queue and go again. And again. And again. As he comes peeling off the “Intimidator,” the “Dominator,” (the “Vominator”?), he has a sort of crazed look in his eyes and a maniacal grin, like–what? What? Have they switched out all the soda dispensers in the park with pure adrenaline? For him, it’s Level 5 or bust. If the bottom drops out or the rattle threatens to separate you from your teeth, so much the better. For me, I am already down a few teeth, so I prefer to keep the rest in my head. For Camille, we discover that this boy who eats “everything” with a list long as my arm of stuff he won’t even try–he will now ride “everything” by standing on the ground under it and looking up.

At first, Will is clearly disappointed by Camille’s false advertising. His “everything” included rides whose safety advisory and legal disclaimers take up multiple billboards. “What the heck?” hangs in the steamy air between us. I suggest that we start small. Keep it positive. We’re at Kings Dominion, for heaven’s sake, a 400-acre amusement park featuring 60 rides, shows and attractions including 12 roller coasters and a 20-acre water park. With refillable drink cups. What could possibly go wrong? So the first ride is “Delirium,” which makes me crazy just thinking about it: a giant swinging orange and purple pendulum. My two clamber in. I see them reach through the roll bars and grab each other’s arms and outstretched hands for a clumsy high five. Their feet dangle already far from the ground, the smallest riders on this run. Before I can get off a workable photo the machine clutches them in its massive fist and starts its giant pendulum swing, back and forth, higher and higher–and higher. It’s good to start your day off screaming, I guess. Oh. Did you think I meant the boys?

I’ve already shared with you my strategy for riding roller coasters or any other high-thrill amusement park ride. Shades of Disney. Step 1: Look around. Gauge the ages of the other folks ponying up to take the ride. Are there kids younger than five in line? This is a good sign. Step 2: Study the ride itself while you wait in the searing heat for your turn. Don’t look at what it does or how much fun those other sick-os are having. Look at what it could do. What it wants to do with you. Are there roll bars? Double-reinforced padding on the seats? This is a bad sign. Study the mechanical configuration of the seat belts. If there’s only one lap belt, or maybe a shoulder strap, you should be fine. But a padded roll bar with a 5-point tether??! Get off now. Get off and do not look back.

Camille bails on a couple–he comes bounding out the exit gate or sometimes regurgitates from the entrance, breathless, grinning, and shaking his head. “Ah, non!” He exclaims, “I very don’t yike this ride!” Turns out he doesn’t like anything that spins, goes in the dark, goes super fast, or super high. He, my little leaping gymnast, does not like to be upside down. (Laughing smiley-face emoji here). Well, okay then! Merry-go-round for you, my boy. Will is crestfallen. Their buddy-hood takes a hit. This is the boy who told me no speed too fast, no height too high. I should have known better. It’s the same boy who put down, “I eat much foods when I am ask” on his paperwork. Luckily, Sophie and friend are there with us, so they alternately tether Will from flying off into lower air space and cajole Camille into trying the rides just once. They even get him upside down. When they can’t, they take Will on the cardiac arrest tour of stuff that shouldn’t be allowed to be called “entertainment,” leaving boy and me behind.

It is fun being in the park with only my half-pint sidekick. Reminds me of days gone by when it was me and Will only, while Bill and the girls would go off to ride the scream machines. Eleven goes in a row on the Buzz Lightyear Astro-blaster, among my fondest memories of time with my son. Unlike a more seasoned park-goer who beelines for the big ones, Camille is intrigued by everything, even the kiddie rides and the game booths. We don’t hurry. We meander, stop at every one. What do you mean you want to try to win that enormous stuffed pink monkey, er, gorilla that is arguably larger than you are? How do you say “rip OFF” en francais? Kid, they are going to charge you $6 a ball for a rigged game that will shame you and leave a rack of giant pandas laughing and hanging from the rafters overhead. Let’s not waste our—But we do. He wants me to translate every word the girl is saying as she explains the game. He asks for clarity, takes his time, clearly able to listen and understand. Interessant, you little imp. Sure enough, game eats through three of his balls, cash happily spent, and Godzilla grins down at us as we walk away.

From there we ride kiddie rides. Even Camille towers over the other riders in line. Some of the rides have no seat belts at all. We fly helicopters, drive caterpillars, we spin in giant red candy apples. The most intense of our rides together is the “Avalanche,” which does indeed go fast and twist as it mimics an airborne bobsled being chased down a mountain by a wave of snow. I was good on that one for two or three rides until Camille insisted I open my eyes. Aye ay ay! He is like an ebullient 8-year-old, nestling his little body into the seat in front of me and leaning back into my arms as they press down on the roll bar and secure us, tandem, into the sled. “Open you EYES!” he commands, turning around several times to make sure. For just a flash, a fleeting moment as we round that third swoop, with the sun in our eyes and wind in our hair, he with his head thrown back laughing and I hanging on for dear life, in that moment I am an ebullient child, too. It is not only my eyes wide open, but all of me, miles above the ground, swirling and whirling in a summer storm of all that it means to be alive. My half-life-plus-some evaporates behind me and I surrender the fear and sadness that were along for the ride, leaning into his solid little body and holding on. Holding on for life is dear.

And then the moment is passed. Unfortunately, with my eyes open I see things. Midway down I study the mechanics of “Le Avalanche,” and it dawns on me as we spiral that there is nothing attaching us to the track. There are no rails, no metal clamps or clutch, there is nothing beneath this car securing us to the wooden chute. Only centripetal force. “Cameeeeel, I very don’t yike this riiiiide!” After we exit I suggest he take Will for the thrill next, not me. Sophie and friend depart, all of us hotter than we can manage. I take the boys for the only meal we eat in the park all day. I am not in the mood for $30 burgers and fries, so I pass. Anyhow I have smuggled in crackers and snacks at the bottom of my first aid kit. Mais oui, bien sur I brought a first aid kit. What do you think I am, a carefree 8-year-old? I’ve got your number here, KD. I will not ride the “Impoverishor.” I have granola bars, snack crackers, two lollipops and two empty water bottles (“NO outside drinks,” they say. They did not say “no outside drink containers”) stashed in hiding places in the day pack I loaded up for what I consider tantamount to a military operation. Men, we are on our feet for 13 hours today. Temperatures expected in the high 90s. Heat index 104. Water bottles? Check! Swim suits? Check! Towels? Check! Sun screen? Cooking back in the van. I dig deep into the first aid kit for a cold tuna sub with fresh lettuce and tomato, but alas, no one has packed one of those in there. It is peanut butter crackers for Jenny. I kid you not. We opened the park in the morning and closed it that night. Twelve hours. All I consumed all day was a package and a half of snack crackers and four gallons of water!

Mission: near impossible. I want to write about the magic, but really there is very little magic to write about. This is Kings Dominion. You wait in a bunch of hot, steamy lines to ride (or not: many a time I am just the place and drink holder) to get your teeth rattled out of your head or get jerked around so much you start pleading with your lumbar vertebrae to keep it together, eh? Then, later in the day you rejoin those same hot, sweaty unwashed masses at the water park. It may be 100 degrees in the shade, but that lazy river just looks a little too lazy for my taste. Here, however, the boys are in their glory. They are busting to be free and bounding through it. They dutifully carry the tote, happily install me on a chaise in the shade where they could find me (should a triple solar eclipse or alien invasion warrant adult intervention at some point during the day. Otherwise I am pretty indispensable). And they are off.

I am just fine with my “only.” I read, I write, I think the thoughts put on hold for the past 17 days, I doze. When it gets too hot I go stand under some giant mushroom water shower thing, fully clothed, lower my internal body temp, and then go back to my seat. A little over three hours later my two water rats come back: you won’t believe it! C’est incroyable! We saw Camille’s brother he is here he is here wiz her family! Unbelievable. What are the chances? It’s the last week of the exchange, in a park holding hot bodies in the tens of thousands, and here are two brothers who live in the same house half a globe away? It’s a French miracle. Desperately I try to text the other host family with what’s left of my cell phone juice, pulling every string I can to track them down. Too late! The boys are already “tubes up!” into the lazy river and can’t be bothered.

It’s wild, truly wild where life takes you. Last year, it took me the base of the Eiffel Tower. The real one, with my daughters. We could not go up because in that single day in August last summer, they went on strike. Tickets for the remaining days before our departure were sold out months before, and the tickets I had carefully secured online were no good. We stood under her soaring steel limbs and gazed upward in awe. Worth a trip from any angle, but still, a sorely missed part of our itinerary. We took dozens of artsy photos and breathed in her raw majesty, but for the bird’s eye view of all Paris, we could only imagine. This summer, a year later, I am about to get that bird’s eye view of all—er, rural Virginia. We are hurrying through the park to meet with Will who has gone off alone for the last 15 minutes before the park closes to ride the “Berzerker.” I didn’t want him to miss out, and Camille and I agree that a ride named after mental infirmity is probably a bad start.  Instead, he and I rode soaring biplanes, high above the trees. “Promise!” Camille yells to me as the little planes start to ascend, “You promise. Open you EYES! And so it goes. Me feeling like an overgrown kid strapped into an orbiting aluminum toy plane at 9:30 at night, following an undergrown teen in his perfect element, soaring through the night air, his face illuminated and shining with all the lights when he turns around to look at me. When we are on the ground again we hurry, hurry side by side to the park exit and to William. Out of the blue he throws his arm around me, or around my side, as we are walking and he is too short to reach my shoulder; it’s more like a walking “side hug,” and he grips my arm trying to match my stride: “Sank you for ziss. Sank you, Jennifer” (pronounced geneefair). “I sink you are my American muzzer. And I am your French ked.” Yes, Camille. Yes. I knew there wasn’t anything holding me to those tracks. Force of love. Remember? Most powerful force on the planet, my ked.

So that is how I find myself five minutes before the park closes riding a tiny elevator up into the darkness and the (mock) three floors of Le Tour Eiffel de Kings Dominion. Camille detoured us with three minutes to spare and here we are, elevator opening for the last time tonight. I am climbing the EIFFEL TOWER (kind-of) with a French ked in the middle of the night in the middle of my life. What are the chances? Do you see things like this coming? I certainly didn’t, but then the ride is so fast I don’t always have my eyes open. (Thank you, Camille.) Apparently this little scale model is one third the height of the original. Still it soars over the park, and the views at night are breathtaking because there are lights as far as the eye can see. All lights and beautiful colors blinking and glinting for miles. The air up here has cooled, and a light rain is beginning to fall, more like a mist. We stand there, gazing out over the iron rails, silenced by beauty. On the night breeze, the satisfaction and gratitude for the day we have accomplished hums quietly, like electricity. His eyes are bright. My eyes are un peu wet. And oh, are they open.

Photo by Viktor Smith on Pexels.com