OK, you read the headline, but I need to say it again and in all caps: TAKE THE VACATION!
I don’t know who needs to hear that, but I certainly did and, honestly, still do. It’s not because I don’t love taking vacations, of course. It’s just that there’s always so much going on—another crisis to field, another bill to be paid, another deadline to meet, another day that the planning just doesn’t happen, another reason to say no.
I don’t want to be that mom, but somehow, when you’re the grown-up in the room with loads of responsibilities, it’s so easy to fall into that trap. And yes, I watched Yes Day with my kids and aspire to that level of yes-ness. (My kids would settle for an hour of it at this point, I think.)
But here’s the thing: That vacation isn’t just about the trip you’re taking, the relaxation you desperately need and the core family memories you’ll inevitably form. I know what you’re thinking right now: Do you even know how to do a vacation? That is the point!
Well, yes, and all of those wonderful things will happen. (To some degree. I mean, we’re still chasing after our kids, and the fact that it’s on a beach with rip currents doesn’t necessarily lessen the stress quotient.) But I’m here to tell you that a simple vacation has the power to be so much more than that when you need it.
I experienced this to the extreme this year. We were dealing with a serious medical emergency, and I’m not going to mince words here: It was awful. Like, really, really, really awful. Which is saying something coming from me because I am in that fun sandwich stage of life (which somehow doesn’t have actual sandwiches) and I was already dealing with awful with my parents for literally years. But when it’s your kids, the stress is next-level in a way I wasn’t prepared for, and it nearly broke me.
Vacations were not even a thought. I was just grateful when weren’t in a hospital or a doctor’s office or on the phone, alternately arguing with them and begging them for help. Those semi-calm stretches, despite the ongoing stress at home, were my vacations, if I’m being honest, and I was happy just staring at a wall.
My kids didn’t quite see it that way. And truth be told, I didn’t either. I was just trying to put one foot in front of the other, but we all were hanging on to those last shreds of normalcy before all this hit: our last vacation last spring, when things were oh-so-normal and oh-so-much-fun.
Mornings on the beach. Nights on the pier. Ping-ponging between sight-seeing and activities and educational jaunts (I can’t help myself—daughter of teachers over here). Dinners and milkshakes and mini golf and late-night cuddles in the cushy hotel beds. I remember the echoes of laughter and ear-to-ear smiles and the wind whipping our hair on the balcony of our room and even the silly sibling squabbles. When I think about it, I get flashes of all that before my brain meanders through the memory like a good book I wish I could read again.
My kids talked about it too. A lot. All year.
We still did a few fun things in the midst of our crisis, don’t get me wrong. We shoehorned it in when we were having a decent week and it was possible. But there is something about a proper vacation that nothing else can compare to. It’s that together time, free of our normal reality, where all the attention centers on them and us. That time when you can ignore everything else because you are literally miles and miles from it and it all kind of blurs into the background. You’ll deal with it, sure, but later. For now, there is only your little family unit and those memories.
And when we were hanging on by a thread this year, we’d hang right onto those memories. They were comforting in a way that not much else was—I guess because they were designed as an escape, and that’s what we were craving more than anything all those months later. They did their job, and then some.
So, like I said earlier in all caps: TAKE THAT VACATION.
Even if you don’t need it in the way we did this year (and I really hope you don’t), it will come in handy for life’s normal ups and downs. We all need something to hang onto, after all.
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