About five years ago I started going on long weekend vacations with my mom. We went to Florida a few times and enjoyed some fun in the sun and much needed time away from the kids. However, as is typical with me, I felt guilty about leaving the girls behind and enjoying myself without them. So I asked my mom if she was ok with bringing them along on our vacations and, for the last three years, we’ve been taking a girls' beach trip.
I am fortunate that my mom spends quite a lot of time with us throughout the year and has even started taking the girls for me during break weeks now that she has retired. They are really comfortable with her and it she doesn't seem to mind doing some occasional parenting for me. While we spend time at one another's houses, I really look forward to this trip more than any other trip every year because I get to spend time with my mom, I get to watch her spend time with my kids, and we always go to the ocean which is a place Andy never wants to go. I call the shots about when we’re going, where were going, and what we’re doing, which is a departure from any vacations with Andy, who acts as the family tour guide, selecting our location every year, making all of the decisions about what we’re going to do while we're there and I go along for the obligatory ride.
We always have an excellent time, which is, of course, why I always want to go again, however I’ve noticed that there is a definite cycle that takes place during a multi-generational family vacation that isn't all positive.
Before the trip itself, there is an equal amount of anxiety, excitement and a ton of preparation and planning. I’m operating on total adrenaline before we even make it to my mom's house. The week before the trip, I take a few hours each evening to do laundry, pack the kids' and my bags. I load up the car and can barely see out the back window. I do my best to keep the peace with the children on the way to my mom's house and the first leg of the tris is usually pretty smooth.
On the first beach day, I drag everyone out of bed. I get up each day at 5 so I want to leave at 6 but mom asks for a compromise of 7 because she doesn't get up until 8 and neither do the kids. I am THE adult in charge on the trip so I do all of the driving and all of the navigating so I am regularly asking the kids stop talking to me over Siri while I negotiate getting on and off the highways. Mom is along for the ride and I’m sure that, after decades of having to be the one always in charge, she feels that it's now my turn so she can sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride.
Except that I can tell this is hard for her because, first of all, my kids are already being irritating within five minutes of leaving her house. She is in pain when I allow them to bring donuts and drinks into her absolutely pristine vehicle, since she's had a 50 year rule that food can not be consumed in her car. Yet she holds her tongue and grabs extra napkins.
Mom also has commentary on my driving which she thinks is being helpful, however for me, telling me that she thinks I’m driving the wrong way, on a one way road, after I have been on this particular highway for about an hour, which is actually just a divided highway, doesn’t feel helpful in anyway. But, we’re still in the honeymoon phase of the trip so I try to tell her to shut up in the most pleasant way possible, she puts up with my awkward struggle to manage the gas pedal and brake in her car, and I am still using my Mary Poppins voice with the children.
Once we hit the sand, it’s all sun, waves and ice cream on days one and two. We are all hitting the waves together, laughing and experiencing that vacation euphoria when it feels like there’s no such thing as reality and no end to the trip in sight. The kids are happy and safe and I have been able to sit in a beach chair for five solid minutes. Mom and I take turns half-snoozing and watching the kids run on the beach. As a parent, I have started to let my guard down. The kids are chill and maybe mom and I can even have a glass of wine and I can get extra crazy and stay up past 10 o’clock. I start parenting a little less and start relaxing a little more
Huge mistake. Because even when you’re on vacation you still have to be a parent. By the time day three hits, things take a turn. The vacation honeymoon is officially over. Everyone wakes up that morning with a sandpaper-esque sunburn and a headache from dehydration. The room, and everything we brought with us, is somehow covered in sand. The kids go back to worshiping their iPads and I start the lecture about how I didn’t spend all this money to come to the beach so that they could lay in bed and watch Netflix. Mom and I start to get irritated at one another with respect to our approaches on to how to behave on vacation. I’ve had just about enough of Moe's unspoken motto to live simply so that others may simply live and her comments about me using all the towels and then throwing them on the floor or Charlotte using a entire bottle of shampoo in hair while taking a shower. Mom is worried that they won’t replace the towels or that the housekeeping staff will look poorly upon us for needing the travel size shampoo and conditioner containers replaced every morning. I remind her that this is indeed a hotel and it’s pretty typical for those bottles to be replaced every day and that we will never know if the housekeeping staff judge us for using all four towels provided.
Also, that previously exciting feeling of being THE adult in charge starts to irk me because I am the one who has to pack and unpack the cooler, carry the majority of the heavy stuff because I’m the strongest most able-bodied person in the group, and negotiate busy tourist-filled streets while the kids slap each other in the back seat and my mom tries to assist with directions by providing recollections of her trip to this particular beach 20 years ago.
Take my parasol and get my cape. Mary Poppins has left the beach and Maleficent has joined the trip.
It seems like I’m raising my voice at the kids every few minutes and my mom who is just, “trying to help" doesn’t actually feel very freaking helpful to me at this point. It is not very helpful that on her trip 20 years ago she thinks they went on a nice long drive with great views of the ocean but she can’t actually remember how to get to the drive or how to help me even try to to figure out the route. So I snap at the kids and then I snap at her and then everybody thinks I’m a huge jerk and nobody’s really talking. We go to bed that night exhausted and grouchy, feeling almost like we’ve gone through the motions of vacation but now we’re missing that awesome relaxed vacation vibe we had just the day before. The routine of pulling the kids off the iPad and removing all the sand from everything in the hotel room and re-packing the cooler has lost its luster and, as we're shuffling things out the door, and I am actually shouting at the kids to stop fighting, my mom hurls the ultimate Baby Boomer parental insult at me. While wearing her straw sunbonnet and carrying the beach blanket, she looks me squarely in the eyes and says, “Your children are in charge of you. You do not have control over them."
Oh, snap. Nana has had it. And now I’m in trouble.
I want to say many things to her at this point. I want to tell her that, when we’re at home, things don’t seem so crazy because we have a schedule and a routine. I want to tell her that they are just tired and dehydrated and cranky and that’s why they’re acting this way and it’s not because we have no values or morals or that I don’t believe in structured parenting. I want to tell her I’m sorry for letting my own parental guard down while on vacation because I should know better that a mom can never be on vacation when she is with her children. I want to tell her that it feels really unfair but, in retrospect, it also feels unfair that it’s what happened to her, too, when I was a kid. I want to tell her that I know that this is her vacation as much as it is ours and that I’m sorry that I'm a biotch and my unruly children are making it stressful for her. Except I don’t say anything to her but I do pull the kids aside and ask them to give Nana some space.
As a matter of fact, I think that we could all use some space. We spend several hours playing in the sand and the surf-solo. We all seem to enjoy some quiet time and before you know it we are all chatting again and Charlotte says, "Nana! Momma says to give you SOME SPACE!" and we laugh it off and just like that it's game back on vacation mode. Yet, sadly, our vacation time is actually over now so we drag ourselves, and our bags to the car and whisper our personal good byes to the ocean and the waves and the seagulls and the sand and the sunshine. We’re all tired and quiet on the drive back. My mom tries to help navigate and I am not annoyed with her tips and driving pointers and she has acclimated to me gunning it because my foot still can't seem to find the gas pedal. We get ice cream as the sun sets and recount our favorite parts of the trip. We are tan and we are tired but we are content and we even begin to discuss where we are going to go next year. AS we pull into her driveway, I just want to figure out how to bottle this trip up and keep it in my pocket every day.
We don’t know how many next years we will all have together on this multi-generational family trip. The girls will get older and have summer jobs, or not want to go on a vacation with their mom and grandma anymore. As mom ages, she may lose her interest in carrying heavy coolers and sleeping in a sandy bed in a hotel room next to a kid who kicks in her sleep. I may not always have a job that affords me the opportunity to take a vacation with Andy and the kids, and then a separate vacation with my mom. I am glad we did this.
It is definitely challenging at times to travel as a multi-generational unit, especially while on vacation because we all have different expectations and hopes as well as idiosyncrasies. Yet, I know it is the best thing to do because, a long time from now, we will look back at the photos and not remember our arguments over towels and shampoo bottles, we will look back and we will remember how special and wonderful it is for a grandmother, her daughter, and her granddaughters to go to the beach together.
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