My approach to the end of a good vacation is to panic.
My stomach twists into a little cherry-stem bow at the very thought of resuming a regular life. I see the piles of laundry arranged almost neatly in the suitcases as mountains of unsettled-ness to be scaled before I can breathe again. I feel like a small child clinging to the idea of having no responsibilities, coddled, cared for, and carefree. (Never mind that I seldom felt care- or responsibility-free in my actual childhood.)
If this is the way I feel after a merely mediocre time away — say that late fall weekend we spent in Hilton Head shuddering at the suburban-ness of it all, mourning the fact that we managed to book only two of our three days at the hotel with the good indoor pool, and reduced by unending rain to the playground at the outlet mall — imagine how sick I was to leave Los Angeles after days of 80-degree weather and the excitement of my sister’s wedding.
[A mea culpa here to all my LA friends who are just now discovering that I was in town and didn't bother to call them. We were consumed by wedding, which merely intensified my fantasies about a three-week visit to Southern California where we can properly see everyone we love. And then, I promise, I will call.]
Even if the only time I ever want to once again live in my old bedroom at my parents’ house is when I wake up in that bedroom the morning before getting on a plane home, the fact remains that I very much wanted to stay. Did I mention it was eighty degrees during the wedding weekend?
My mother-in-law was visiting as well, making the full-time childcare that usually renders me twice as exhausted at the end of a vacation as I was at the start of it much more of a breeze. “Do you mind if I leave her with you for a little while?” I would say, handing my fussy baby over to her grandmother’s eager hands as I rushed off to a yoga class.
And then there was the elevator drop of a let-down after the big wedding for which we’d been planning, the weekend of seeing relatives and friends. My mind was set for a Big Event and couldn’t quite settle into the concept of quiet, daily rhythms again.
And yet, as much as these feeling swirled me in circles of rising anxiety, it all paled in comparison to the task ahead: ferrying a three-year-old and an eleven-month-old to LAX, onto a plane for a four-and-a-half hour flight, and then into a car for another two-and-a-half hours to Asheville. Thank goodness for Backyardigans DVD’s.
Continue reading ‘When the Vacation Ends and You Still Have 2,500 Miles to Go. With Kids.’
