I Just Want You to Know_ Letters to My Kids on Love, Faith, and Family - Kate Gosselin [14]
Packing that bag seems simple, but it wasn’t. Since they slept with their comfort items, we couldn’t pack them until right before we left. If I set the bag down, the kids would find their comfort item, take it out, and I wouldn’t notice until it was too late.
As Jon put the kids in the car, I counted the comfort items one last time to make sure they were all there. I wasn’t going to let anything ruin this trip.
Heading down the highway, I could see it was still overcast. “You’re sure it’s not supposed to rain?” I asked Jon again.
“Nope, they said it was not going to rain.”
I wanted to believe him, but forty miles into the drive, the sky darkened ominously.
“Tell me it is not going to rain.”
“Kate, it is not going to rain. They said it wasn’t going to rain.”
Two hours into the drive, the unthinkable happened. It started to rain.
“Jon, it’s raining! Now what do we do?”
“What do you want to do?”
I hoped and prayed it wasn’t raining at the zoo. We had spent so long researching this trip, packing the van, and getting the kids’ hopes up; I couldn’t see turning around when maybe it would all blow over.
“Let’s keep going.”
An hour later, we pulled into the parking lot of the National Zoo, and it was still raining.
“Now what?” Jon asked.
It was pouring at this point. “Let’s just make the best of it. If we see three animals and then leave, at least we saw three animals.”
We parked and unloaded that huge stroller, which of course meant standing in the rain while we attached the front wheel. When we unloaded the kids, I tried not to make a big deal out of the rain because I didn’t want them to get upset. After all, it is just water.
Jon raced to the entrance with the stroller, avoiding the deepest puddles. I ran behind, trying not to get hit with the spray. No question about it—we were going to get wet. “Jon, when we get inside let’s see if we can buy some of those rain ponchos.” I was determined to help the kids have the best time possible. We took cover in the first shop we saw. “Do you sell rain ponchos?” I asked the girl behind the counter.
“I’m sorry, we’re all out. We sold the last one about twenty minutes ago.”
My kids in trash bags. What a sight, huh?
It was probably a good thing. I was willing to spend the money, but we couldn’t have afforded ten anyway. Then I had an idea. In front of us was a food vendor huddling under his hut to keep dry.
“Excuse me, do you have a roll of trash bags?”
“Uh, yeah. Why?”
“Could you give me ten of them? I’ll pay you.”
“No, lady, you can just take them,” he said as he tore off ten plastic bags.
Growing up, my grandma had taught me a trick; if you poke head and armholes into the trash bag, it’s almost like having a rain poncho. One by one, Jon and I dressed each of the kids into a clear trash bag and tucked it around them. Then Jon and I put ours on. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it helped. All morning we had walked around in trash bags and hid under trees and shelters. We spent a long time watching the elephants because they were indoors. We knew we looked ridiculous, but we didn’t care. We wanted our kids to experience the zoo like kids in normal-sized families did.
But I had forgotten again that we weren’t a normal family. Our first shows had aired and people were starting to recognize us from TV. With the size of our group and our trash-bag ponchos we weren’t exactly inconspicuous. Jon noticed people were staring. As word traveled around the zoo, we began to see people taking pictures—not of the animals—but of us. By the time we got to the panda exhibit (a rare display; most zoos in America don’t have pandas) we found more people staring and taking pictures of our family than of the pandas! It’s actually quite uncomfortable to be in