Reentry shock: Holly returns from a visit to the grandparents

Holly returned yesterday from a two-night trip to see her grandparents, aunt, uncle and cousins. We hadn’t really planned it; the idea took shape as it went along. My in-laws came to our house for a cookout on Sunday and spontaneously invited Holly home with them for a couple of nights; then on Monday they all went over to my sister-in-law’s house to swim and Holly ended up staying with Carolyn’s family the second night.

Now she’s back home, which is a comforting feeling, but I have to admit it was not bad to have her away for a couple of nights. As I’ve already blogged about many times in the past three weeks, we’re having a summer of Extreme Togetherness so far, and it’s only fair to be honest about the fact that a break from all that togetherness came at just the right time. Tim had other things going on over the past couple of days, and I welcomed the chance to put in some solid work hours and even do some pleasure reading.

By this morning I was apprehensive about Holly’s return, not because I wasn’t ready to resume our normally scheduled programming – the 48 hours apart were great, but I didn’t feel like I needed more; I was ready to have her around again – but because the reentry can be so tough when the kids come home from visiting their grandparents. With my parents, it’s different, of course, because my parents live right next door. The kids are back and forth all the time. We all really love the togetherness we have with them, but spending time in their house is part of weekly if not daily life for the kids; it’s a pleasure but not a novelty.

Visiting the other grandparents is more of a Big Deal. Special events (movies, arcades, multigenerational parties), special food (often from Dunkin’ Donuts), special treatment. And I’ve learned over the years that returning to regular life can be surprisingly difficult for the kids after all that specialness. (In Tim’s case, to be blunt, when he was little he usually returned from the visits constipated, which made things even worse: see reference to Dunkin’ Donuts above. Fortunately that’s not so much of an issue anymore.) Holly just gets home a little emotionally overwrought, having had two days of nonstop festivities.

I’m sympathetic, though, because I still remember what it felt like to be in that position. I remember how my parents would openly groan over the way my sisters and I acted after a visit with our grandparents. Returning to the life of a commoner after being princess for a day – or in the case of visiting my grandparents in Colorado, a whole week – can be difficult on the princess herself and all her subjects as well.

My friend Beth calls it TMFS: Too Much Fun Syndrome. When her boys come home from a visit with the grandparents, she tries to give them a buffer zone until the next day – a little TV permitted, no big chores required – so that they can gradually regain their appreciation of home and hearth rather than feeling ripped away from all the fun. I decided I’d try to do that with Holly, but I’d already committed to attending Tim’s evening baseball game and suspected that might be our first battle.

It actually worked out okay, though. She seemed happy to see me and eager to tell me about all the fun she had while she was away, but she wasn’t acting difficult or spoiled. So maybe the transition is getting easier now that she’s older. And ultimately, I think it’s a useful lesson. Lots of events in our lives are so special that it’s difficult to transition out of them. I used to cry at the end of the school year, if it had been a particularly good year. Some women don’t like to see their wedding or honeymoon end because it’s all been so special. (I didn’t have that problem because I was so excited to get home to all my new kitchen accessories.)

These days, the hardest transition for me comes after our yearly vacation in Colorado. I just hate to leave. Believe me, it’s not that anyone treats me like a princess there. Not at all. It’s just a really special and inspiring place to be, and there’s always the sense of something being irrefutably over when I leave.

But then it never seems like a whole year has gone by before I’m preparing to head out to Colorado again, and in a way, knowing it will be hard to leave is what makes it so rewarding to go. Holly is lucky that she has two sets of grandparents to make her feel special: one set next door and one set just an hour away. She’s lucky to have cousins who welcome her for sleepovers too. When the visits end, she learns how it feels to come home to the family: comforting and familiar, and also sometimes a little disappointing because a great time has come to an end. That’s not a bad lesson to learn. It’s a feeling I think we all come to treasure in some small, bittersweet way.