FRIDAY, JUNE 29, 2012
I remember taking winter and
spring-break family vacations as a teenager, but I don't have memories of
summer vacation trips. There was always so much to do in our little waterfront
village, that it would have been a shame to leave it to go on a summer
vacation.
When I got married, and we had our daughter, we took a few planned vacations, but it never became a family tradition, or something that we looked forward to each summer.
When we lived in California, and our daughter was about five, we took a vacation to Disneyland. For that trip we put our dog, cat and hamsters in a kennel. It was such a bad experience for them (and for me because I couldn't relax) that our poor dog had nightmares for a year. From that point on, I would never leave them in a kennel, so we either had to find someone to stay at the house with them, or take them with us in the RV that we bought second-hand so we could do just that.
Weekend trips and camping became our getaway of choice.
Being an Air Force family, most of our moves took place during the summers, so planning, packing, and making multiple trips to a new homestead filled many of our summers.
When we moved to Maryland, we found a petsitter that we could count on, and we took two, three or four day trips to New York City, but again, not a summer vacation.
When I got married, and we had our daughter, we took a few planned vacations, but it never became a family tradition, or something that we looked forward to each summer.
When we lived in California, and our daughter was about five, we took a vacation to Disneyland. For that trip we put our dog, cat and hamsters in a kennel. It was such a bad experience for them (and for me because I couldn't relax) that our poor dog had nightmares for a year. From that point on, I would never leave them in a kennel, so we either had to find someone to stay at the house with them, or take them with us in the RV that we bought second-hand so we could do just that.
Weekend trips and camping became our getaway of choice.
Being an Air Force family, most of our moves took place during the summers, so planning, packing, and making multiple trips to a new homestead filled many of our summers.
When we moved to Maryland, we found a petsitter that we could count on, and we took two, three or four day trips to New York City, but again, not a summer vacation.
2006 Christmas Trip to NYC
Central Park.
I regret that we didn't make the effort to plan more trips,
especially summer trips. I am probably to blame for that because we had so many
animals (three large dogs, a cat and a 20 gallon tank of fish), and I just
didn't like leaving them. As I got older, and made numerous attempts to stop
smoking (yes, I finally succeeded), and got into ruts, I put on weight and
didn't want to go anywhere where a bathing suit was the recommended attire.
Although it was always difficult for us as a family to make
decisions about what we wanted to do, and where we wanted to go, I either
couldn't relax enough to let it just happen, or I didn't work hard enough to
make it happen.
As I look at photos of other people's current summer
vacations, and I know that this is probably the last summer I will home my
daughter home, and my family is in pieces, I regret that we didn't make summer
vacations a priority.
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