Published in the Fauquier Times-Democrat Weekend on August 19, 2011
Who said summer could be over? I’ve barely nicked our list of summer projects. True, we can walk through the garage now, and there have been sightings of our basement floor, but where did the time go?
Sunday night we returned from a quick, three-day getaway into the mountains. We’ve barely begun our summer fun. How can it be time for school?
We had relatives visit for eleven days, made a single day trip to New Jersey for my nephew’s graduation and my cousin’s 50th birthday, took the kids to the swimming pool at the WARF several times, drove into DC to the Natural History Museum, and saw Luray Caverns again, but did I ever play a game of chess with my sons? Did I get around to a simple sewing project with my youngest daughter? Have I read a book?
This year, I did things backwards. Since I normally do things so slowly or late that it may as well be backwards, this should have approached the domain of the double negative and set me straight, but it hasn’t. I took the children school supply shopping early. (Of course, you read that column.) With that out of the way, I could start thinking about planning a vacation.
With the threat of summer ebbing and school washing in, we had only one weekend available. Unfortunately, our eldest daughter had signed up for the GRE on that one magical weekend, so it was going to be a lonely trip: just the seven of us and our shelter dog.
I realized then that planning a vacation actually takes a little time, effort, and of course, planning. I’ve even heard about businesses that do this for you! You’d have to wonder about our sense of family vacations. We have a few preferences: It needs to be within driving distance. Please don’t make it too physically taxing. I’m in no shape to be hiking up some mountain, and I’m a little nervous of water, so don’t expect me to be snorkeling around somewhere. It should have some educational value beyond learning that I’m in no shape to be hiking or snorkeling. It should include museum and/or zoo visits. If I get to be the driver to our lovely, life-long learning vacation resort, we will also intensify the experience by listening to an audio book in the car.
Think of normal life as the ant that is outdoors enjoying the sunshine, and vacation as being the ant enjoying the sunshine under a magnifying glass. Perhaps there is a reason we keep our vacations short. Maybe standardized testing is less painful than a vacation with the Ribeiro Family.
I’m thinking that our vacations worked better when the children were closer to one age group, instead of being sprawled across the decades from entering elementary school to legal adults. Isn’t it irritating how children insist upon growing up? The true beauty of childhood is that it takes so very little to please a child. A young child can be happy with the smallest things: kicking pebbles together, rolling around and laughing on the carpet, or trying to catch toads and butterflies. These things can delight the heart of a small child.
We traveled with three teenagers.
These teens had wanted to go to the beach. Or was it everyone that was in a rebellious mood? They had already seen and remembered, in excruciating detail, our visit several years ago to the Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton, Virginia. I tried to remind them about our compressed, 40-hour vacation to Virginia Beach last year, which, incidentally, is perhaps the best vacation we’ve taken. If we applied the same logic, they had already “been there, done that” with the sand and the waves. Why should they want to go again (and again)? Apparently, the flavor of the beach does not wear out the way the flavor of a museum does. The older, more sophisticated, and more jaded hearts are a little harder to delight.
Some of the more mutinous of our group awoke late on the morning of departure, and hadn’t packed a single thing for themselves. By contrast, the two youngest had been packed up for a week. (We will not hold it against the six-year-old that he forgot to pack any shirts. After all, he had packed everything else that mattered: a toothbrush, underwear, shorts, pajamas, and his stuffed dinosaur and a pocket-sized fighter jet.)
The older children approached my amazing vacation plans with the enthusiasm of criminals heading to the gallows. Come to think of it, they were acting like criminals that should have been heading to the gallows. One thoughtful soul helpfully offered, an hour before departure, to stay at home and finish summer assignments. This new plan could lighten the load on the car, open up more space for baggage, alleviate concerns about pet care, and reduce our carbon footprint.
I offered my carbon footprint.
Remind me on our next vacation to the mountains to bring along a bucket of sand and a pail of water for those who are missing the beach.
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