The Family Vacation

Long the hallmark of the middle class, the family vacation provides hard-working men and women a week each year to focus exclusively on making memories with their spouses and offspring. Without the distractions of texts, e-mails, bills, work or school, moms and dads set out to provide memorable, enriching life experiences that their children can carry into adulthood and reflect upon fondly in coming years. Suitcases (or, as R calls them “case suits”) are packed, itineraries are made, and mail is stopped.

Each February, I turn to my husband and ask him where he would like to go on vacation for a week in the summer. “Somewhere close” is usually his reply. (One has to wonder about the person who first decided that confining family members to a space the size of a Johnny on the Job and driving several hours was the recipe for relaxation and domestic harmony.)

Amidst flying snowflakes and subzero temperatures, usually while nursing a head cold, I eagerly research hotel rooms, cabins, or condominiums and dream of warm summer nights and walking hand-in-hand along a shoreline. Our children, dressed in white, K with a pinafore and bow in her hair, skip ahead of us looking for shells or pinecones or other treasures of nature. The temperature is always a perfect 76 degrees in my fantasy, and we seem to be the only people present in our vacation sanctuary.

Returned from an actual week of vacationing with my family, I have come to the conclusion that reality is the nail in the coffin of expectations. Don’t get me wrong. There are moments from this vacation that I will cherish for the rest of my life. Last year, K was still too young to interact in a meaningful way with her brother. This year, they delighted in plotting against us from the backseat. (Think repeated singing of playground songs and crude noises made by the mouth.) They reveled in discovering new places and seeing things they hadn’t seen before (like the inside of a cave. Evidently, bat poop is endlessly fascinating.) And when I’m an old woman, the image of two happy, smiling faces jumping into my outstretched arms from the side of a swimming pool will sustain me. To quote J, “It seems like we always come away with great memories, but sometimes it’s just so dang stressful.”

Last summer we chose a vacation destination that required us to cross three states and drive approximately 13-hours. That experience fresh in our minds, we decided to stick closer to home and drive east to a popular vacation destination about 5 hours away. R took advantage of his close back seat proximity to his sister to enhance her toddler vocabulary. The “Can You Say?” game took off from the start and was mutually entertaining for both kids. Our not-yet-two-year-old can now utter such helpful conversational phrases as “I farted” and “Where is your butt?” (R’s success rate is even better than Rosetta Stone, which promises that you will be conversationally proficient in a language of your choice in as little as five lessons.)

When they tired of the “Can You Say?” game, R turned to his old standby, tormenting his sister by holding things just out of her reach, and then mocking her when she cried. J and I shut this down quickly by distributing snacks and crayons, which K promptly spilled all over. (I recently found violet lodged in a crack in the console, oddly warped by the July heat.) K also decided that vacation was the perfect time to reveal her intense aversion to wearing shoes, so that I lived in perpetual fear that we were going to leave strays at every rest stop along the way.

Like Lucy and Ethel, Abbott and Costello, Bert and Ernie, and Thelma and Louise (okay, bad example), J and I each play a role when it comes to vacation transportation. I’m terrible at reading maps and giving directions and prefer to drive, while J revels in finding the best, most direct route to our destination. Most of the time, this division of responsibility works well, J calling out directions, me turning left here, merging onto a highway there. As all couples that have travelled together know, even the most solid relationships can bend under the strain of heavy traffic, whining children, and lack of sleep.

My husband is the king of the imaginary brake pedal. If he has even an inkling that you might not see the gigantic semi idling at the stoplight in front of you and brake soon enough to avoid hitting it, he will brake for you. Early in our marriage, I found this charming. It was almost a reflex, like he was involuntarily programmed to keep us safe. Seven years in, I find his sudden foot and knee flexing to be a silent commentary on my driving abilities. That, along with his charming habit of leaning slightly to one side or the other in an effort to guide the car where he thinks it should be going, has led to many choruses of “Would you like to drive?”

This year, I booked a condo with two full bedrooms and two full baths. Sharing a hotel room with two small children means that J and I either have to go to bed at 10 PM or keep the kids up and deal with the consequences the next day. When we discussed these reservations back in February, I pictured us putting the kids to bed side-by-side in one of the spacious king-sized beds, and then having time to relax and have grown-up discussion before we headed off to bed in the second room. As it turns out, kids don’t sleep well alone in strange places, even when they have each other. J ended up occupying one of the king-sized beds while I awoke each morning to R’s bony knee in my ribs and cries of “I pottied Mama!” from K.

I love to document our family travels through pictures, and we have albums full of vacation photographs, first as a couple, and then with R as a grinning toddler, and now the four of us. What I’ve noticed is that not unlike my February fantasy vacations, I tend to photograph the idyllic moments, when everyone is smiling for the camera, as if to prove that this vacation was perfect. This year, I decided to bring out the journalist in myself, dust her off, and strive to capture the truth (good, bad or ugly). Here are a few of the highlights:

-A charming photo of K, on her back on the ground, kicking her feet because her mini-golf ball had to be returned to the clubhouse at the end of the game.

-R melting down on the floor of a conservation center because he was ready to go on the hike we promised and tired of all the “boring” stuff we wanted to look at.

-K pouting in front of a wooden ship’s wheel because she wanted to have complete control over turning it, as her brother stands in the background smiling.

-After an hour of getting everyone ready to go mini-golfing, buckled in, equipment rented and paid for, train taken to get to hole #1, the skies opened up and a torrential downpour of rain soaking the four of us as we scrambled to get back to the car.

-R’s tear-stained, powder sugar-covered face, comparing the amount of funnel cake he got to the amount everyone else got (despite the fact that he ate ¾ of it).

-My husband, looking dazed, as if he has just walked out of a combat zone as he struggles to fold the stroller and load it onto the tram after a long day at an amusement park.

When the photos came back a couple of weeks after our return, I flipped through them, recalled the stories that went with each, smiled, and turned to J.

“What a great vacation! Where do you want to go next year?”