Other people having fun

I’ve been looking at pictures all week. Pictures of New York City, pictures of Vermont and Vancouver, pictures of Boston’s Freedom Trail, pictures of a Caribbean cruise (not the one that lost power and had no working bathrooms!), pictures of the Arizona desert.

It’s public school vacation week here, and our friends are madly posting their vacation snapshots on Facebook. Not only do I know where they all went; I know what they did while they were there, how crowded it was or wasn’t, what the snow or surf conditions were like, and even what they wore throughout their vacation.

And I have to say I’m thoroughly enjoying it. So I was surprised to hear a segment on NPR’s Morning Edition earlier this week about how therapists are reporting increased business from unhappy patients who are overwhelmed with feelings of envy and insecurity because of what they see their friends doing on Facebook: the clothes, the vacations, the parties, the fun.

We didn’t go far this vacation week – we went to Portland last weekend, which was great, but other than that the big excursions have been to a nearby museum and a frozen yogurt parlor – but I don’t feel envious or insecure; I feel happily entertained by my friends’ photos. Here’s one of Holly’s friends posing next to a horse in Central Park, and here are our former neighbors at a Diamondbacks spring training game. Jody and her daughter got caught in a blizzard but ultimately reached their destination; Diane waited in the airport for a long time after her flight was cancelled, but now she’s with her new grandchild. I think it’s great fun to see where people are and what they’re doing, and I’m happy for them that they can take interesting trips.

I have a recurrent memory from childhood of sitting in long backups at the toll gates on the Maine Turnpike on a summer weekend, waiting seemingly forever for our turn to get through and continue making our way home. All around us were other cars with other sunburned, tired vacationers like us. “Isn’t it nice to see that so many people have been vacationing and having fun?” my parents used to say as the car inched forward fractionally.

No, I would think to myself. What would be nice would be to hit some open highway and get home. I wish none of these other people was here vacationing and having fun. They are all in our way and I want to get home.

But now I understand what my parents meant, and I’m glad their words have stayed in my mind. Maybe I’m just older than the people referred to on Morning Edition who feel envious and insecure about their friends’ photos; maybe I’ve just lived long enough to feel grateful any time anyone anywhere is having fun, and if it’s someone I know, all the better. I don’t feel bad that we didn’t go far this week, but I think it’s wonderful so many of them did. 

I don’t think this suggests that I’m a particularly selfless person, just that it’s so clear to me that plenty can go wrong in life at any time, and seeing pictures of people enjoying themselves, even if it’s very far away from where I am right now, is a pleasurable experience for me. I wish them safe travels and a wonderful time. And yes, to be truthful, I look forward to posting some enviable vacation photos of my own next time a vacation week rolls around.

February staycation

I like to think of it as a fair trade-off, and I savored it fully all day yesterday.

True, for the first eight days of the school vacation week it seemed as if everyone we knew had left town and was either riding up a ski lift or sliding down a water slide while we stayed home and kept Carlisle from getting musty, but yesterday the tables were turned: everyone else was arriving home to empty refrigerators and piles of dirty laundry while the four of us were wrapping up a very peaceful and serene staycation.

And in fact, I didn’t really envy the travelers, except maybe just for the glory of getting to say they’d gone away for the week. But we had such an enjoyable time at home that I didn’t feel like we were missing out. I had some opportunities to go walking in the woods, and even got the kids to come with me a couple of times. Tim went up to Portland with my parents for an overnight. Both of the kids had sleepovers with friends. We went to a museum one day and a movie another day; other activities included Tim getting a haircut and Holly picking out some new clothes. The four of us curled up to watch a Shrek DVD one weekend afternoon. We baked cookies and made Rick a birthday cake.

Not that I ever get all the way through my list, even during vacation. I had planned all week to find the bedside lamps and some framed family photos that are still in storage in the basement; that never happened. More importantly, I had promised myself that I would spend some time cleaning up Holly’s room, which truly does look like the proverbial cyclone hit it. That did happen, but it was literally in the final half-hour of the vacation, after Holly’s shower and before her 9:00 lights-out deadline last night.

It’s okay, though. School vacations are a limited commodity. Even this past week, I was talking to a friend about vacation week when I realized both her kids are now in college and the public school vacation schedule doesn’t mean anything to her anymore. I’ll be at that point myself before I know it. And chances are, when that time comes, Holly’s room will still look like a cyclone hit it; that’s a characteristic of hers that I’m not counting on seeing change. For now, I’m just relishing the memory of such a peaceful stay-at-home week. And unlike all my sunburned, ski-weary friends, I don’t even have any unpacking to do.

Pack it in

Our vacation is still a few weeks away, but I’m already thinking about packing. And this article in last week's Boston Globe by Beth Teitell made me smile with recognition.

I have often thought I am about the world’s worst packer. I couldn’t pack light if my life depended on it. And it always seems to me that by an inexplicable principle of physics, no matter where I’m going and no matter what piece of luggage I choose, my suitcase is always this close to bursting, the zipper always this close to tearing away from the fabric. I always seem to have just one more thing than my suitcase can realistically hold.

Beth Teitell describes a number of obstacles to effective packing. I’m guilty of all of them – and then some. For one thing, even though I’m a writer and much of my livelihood depends on my ability to imagine situations beyond the reality in which I’m immersed, I seem to be incapable of picturing any weather beyond that which I’m experiencing at the moment I pack. Weather.com might as well be written in Mandarin for all the use it does me when I look up the forecast for my destination (and I always do). If it’s 47 degrees and raining at home as I pack for a visit to a Caribbean island, I’m sure to find myself in a tropical bungalow with jeans and wool pullovers. If it’s 92 and humid as I pack for a trip to the Colorado Rockies, I shiver away my time in the mountains in sleeveless blouses and cotton skirts, no matter that I’ve visited the Colorado Rockies nearly every summer of my life and I know it always dips below 60 degrees by the time the sun sets.

Even when I do pack appropriately for my destination, I pack too much of everything. If the weather is just right for cropped pants and cotton t-shirts, I’m not going to want to wear the same ones every day, am I? If it’s chilly in the evening and I need a blazer over my blouse, I don’t want anyone to get tired of seeing the same blazer, day after day. And what are the odds that blazer will match more than one or two outfits? So of course I’ll need more than one.

My other mistake is that I tend to pack aspirationally. That is, I pack for what I hope will happen on the trip rather than what I really think probably will. And so I pack dresses and attractive shoes because it’s a nice idea to think I’ll walk around my destination city in stylish dresses every day rather than a touristy costume of shorts, t-shirts and running shoes, even though once I’m faced with the prospect of a full day of sightseeing ahead, I’ll want the shorts and sneakers. I pack extra outfits with the idea that I’ll change before dinner every evening despite the fact that we’re never that formal when we travel. In short, I pack for the person I want to picture myself being while on vacation, rather than for the person I know I really am.

Still, I’ll keep working at it. Just as I dream of becoming someone who regularly arrives at appointments ten minutes early instead of two minutes late, I dream of zipping up a suitcase with room to spare. And if I never reach that point? There are always bigger suitcases out there.

February vacation at home

Now it can be told: there have been years when I dreaded February vacation week. But right now I’m hard-pressed to explain just why.

Objectively, of course, I remember my reasons. Many families we know travel during February vacation because it’s really not a great time to be home in New England. We find plenty of ways to keep ourselves busy when we are home in the other three seasons each year. We bike, hike, walk, swim, boat; we play badminton, whiffle ball, Frisbee; we picnic; we walk to the ice cream stand.

Winter’s tough, though, really. Especially by February. Yes, there’s sledding and fort-building and snowshoeing to enjoy, but with five school cancellation days logged in the past six weeks, my kids have already done all of that – a lot. This week it just feels cold and icy, rather than wintry in an adventuresome or exciting way.

And yet it doesn’t really seem to matter. When both kids were much younger, I found it very hard to keep them occupied during February vacation. Many of their friends were away skiing or sunning, and the friends that did stay in town and came over to play seemed like just as much work to keep entertained as my own kids.

But everyone is growing older, and this year has been different. We’re actually having a great week at home. We’ve done a few little excursions, and Holly and I went with another mother and daughter up to Portland, Maine, last weekend, which kicked off the vacation week to a festive start, but for the most part the kids are just finding things they like to do around home. Holly asked me a couple of days ago to take her to the arts and crafts store; I spent less than ten dollars on materials that have kept her busy ever since, making collages, sculpture and mobiles. Tim plays on-line games with his friends, but he has also been exchanging emails with a girl in his class, playing nightly games of Uno with me, and even joining me in yoga DVDs a couple of times. Yesterday we each packed up a book and went to Starbucks for an hour of reading and hot chocolate.

So I don’t think at-home vacations are a cause for concern anymore. We’ve managed to avoid the staycation crowds at the bowling alleys and shopping malls, and yet we’ve also avoided the temptation to hole up all week going nowhere at all. I don’t think the kids will identify this past week as their favorite vacation of all time, but we’ve all had a good time, and they’ll end the week with happy memories: Holly has had a couple of afternoon playdates; Tim had one sleepover. I did a lot of cooking, including bacon, which my kids consider to be the only food you really need to make it a celebration.

I’m still hoping we go somewhere for at least part of the April vacation week, and even if we don’t, I hope the weather is warm enough for a lot of outdoor activity. But as February vacations go, this one has worked out pretty well for us.

February vacation week

When I was growing up, school vacation weeks usually meant family travel. Really great destinations, too. We didn’t go overseas as a family, but we went to all kinds of other wonderful places during school vacation weeks: San Francisco. Florida. Quebec City. New York City. Sea Island, Georgia.

So I feel a little bit remiss in not having any great travel plans for my children during this week of vacation, but circumstances didn’t allow it this year. My husband Rick started a new job recently and doesn’t have vacation time yet, and it turned out to be just as well that we were home-based for this February vacation week since Rick’s 91-year-old grandfather died late last week after a short and unanticipated illness.

Watching the kids, though, I can see they’re having a great vacation week even though we’re right at home. In fact, it’s possible that being at home might be adding to their appreciation of the vacation this particular week. After several days of family visiting, wakes and funeral services, we’re happy to be staying put in our own house now, and the kids don’t seem to have any shortage of things to do. Holly and a friend dragged sleds out to the hill by our house this morning; the sledding on yesterday’s thick fluffy snowfall wasn’t too successful, but the girls buried each other in small snow piles instead, and came in asking for hot chocolate, which I made; then we went to the indoor pool all afternoon. Tim shoveled snow for us this morning and played some computer games.

A friend lent us her Wii Fit Plus set for vacation week, and the kids have been having a great time with that too. Though some parents bemoan the Wii phehnomenon, I always point out that with my kids being different sexes and four years apart in age, there aren’t a great number of activities they enjoy together; Wii is one of them, and so I tend to look on it favorably. Together they’ve been exploring the many facets of Wii Fit Plus, from virtual snowball fights to virtual judo, and the sound of the two children laughing together makes me smile no matter what I’m doing.

My aunt arrived earlier today from Colorado for a short visit with us, and the kids have been having fun getting reacquainted with her after a year. Holly showed Pat her recent beading accomplishments; Tim explained to her how American Idol works (one could argue that if you’ve reached the age of 67 and recently explored the Macchu Picchu ruins, both of which are true of my aunt, you can probably live happily without having American Idol explained to you, but it was a reasonable bonding experience for the two of them). And then she told Tim she has friends at home in Colorado who competed on Amazing Race, which impressed Tim to no end. Plus she took us out to dinner at our favorite Asian restaurant, where the kids can have crab Rangoon and I can have masaman curry and Rick can have a little of everything.

So it’s shaping up to be a great vacation week with lots of happy moments despite the lack of travel. I like seeing the kids have fun around home, and I like being on a schedule where I can enjoy the time with them rather than filling their hours with childcare arrangements. There are always ways in which things might be going differently: according to some plans I ought to have a full-time job outside the house right now; according to other plans we might be traveling somewhere cool, like my family used to do with February vacation time. But for the moment, this is plenty for us. Fresh snow to sled through, a membership card at the local indoor pool; hot chocolate when we get back inside; a houseguest willing to look at the kids’ toys, my photo album, and American Idol to boot. It’s a fine vacation week.