Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2001-06-18 - 7:33 a.m.

Vacation!

Today I am going on vacation. Four at a local resort with my best friend and all our kids.

I've taken a lot of vacations in my life. I had years where, when we considered vacations, we went down to the travel agent and got brochures. Bickered over whether the inter-island flights were worth the high rates. Where a vacation that didn't start with the smell of jet fuel wasn't a real vacation.

But these are different times for me. These years, vacations start with figuring out how to jam everything into my friend's car, and fretting about whether the kids will grind Cheezit crumbs into her back seat upholstery on the drive up.

And these are better years. I've had to go back to what a vacation really is, what it means. Why I'm always convinced that I need one.

Vacations, for one thing, mean heat. I'm not the Alaskan Cruise type. I love scenery, true, but I want to watch it in as little clothing as possible. I want to be close to water. I want to watch Oldest Daughter show off her diving skills, and Younger Daughter holler for me to look at something she's doing in the pool every two minutes.

I want someone to cook for me. I want to find something I want to eat, or at least don't mind eating, printed on a plasticized piece of paper. I want to point to it, and have it brought to me, and cleared away when I'm finished. And I want that piece of paper to have something on it that doesn't make my kids say, "Eeeeeeeewwwww." It no longer has to be unpronounceable, or unaffordable, to be vacation food. It just has to be orderable and edible and in decent proximity to things like "chicken fingers" and "bambino pizza."

I want to have a little luxury. Small things, like letting the children choose a souvenir, or drinking bottled iced tea without reminding myself that I could make an entire pitcher of it cheaper.

I want to be in the company of people I love. My memories of Maui, and Orlando, and Nassau, are marred by remembering the dynamics of traveling with a man I was afraid of; by my nervousness that he was angry, would be angry, had been angry with me. By his slow-boiling silences, by never being able to ask for what I wanted, by trying too hard to be accomodating and obedient and by always failing miserably. Now, I travel with my very favorite people - my best friend, my boyfriend, my kids. I plan never to travel again with anyone who doesn't want to talk to me, who doesn't want to listen to me, who I don't find endearing and amusing and charming - and who doesn't find ME all those things, too. It's all about the company I keep.

So we'll jam the kids and the coolers and the bags into the car, and we'll head off for three days of fun, our-style. We'll go out to dinner. We'll go for walks in the evenings. We'll examine our lives in minute detail by the pool, and laugh a lot, and get cross with our kids. We'll talk about what we did last trip and what we should do next trip. I'll sunburn my shoulders, and miss my boyfriend, and remember how incredibly blessed I am to have a best friend. I'll relax and be grateful.

This trip coming up is a real vacation. It meets every one of my new vacation critera. We don't need our passports, we won't be getting any packages of peanuts, I won't need to get a phrasebook. But now that I've figured out what recreation IS, I'm off to get me some.

(Want something good to read this week? Check out the great friend I NEVER get to travel with: Wondering in Aliceland)

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