Summer Vacations are for Parents, Too

Remembering Chevy Chase in those summer vacation movies reminds me of the fact that most so-called "family vacations" are, at best, vacations for the kids and torture for the parents. I'm generalizing, of course, but most generalizations as well as clichés, have a strong basis in truth. I stand by the proposition that we parents usually need a vacation after our family one, if only to recover and rest.

This summer my younger son, David, got to spend several weeks at the sleep- away camp he loves, while my older son, Will, is indulging his passion for rock 'n' roll at a Rock School where he's taking drum lessons, and participating in numerous bands and concerts through the school. He'll also be living, figuratively, in our garage with his own band, driving the nearby horses crazy, or am I mistaking their thrashing about as dancing?

My wife, Loren, is going to Vancouver to be with her parents while her mother undergoes some serious surgery. She intends to stay until her mother is well and to support her father during this precarious time.
I'm holding down the fort at home, while still writing, and working to give my new website (www.brucesallan.com) the attention I naively believe it deserves.

My assertion is that parents need vacations, too, and not just a date night or weekend away. We need to recharge, regenerate, and have the peace-of-mind of not worrying about our kids' daily needs or squabbles, while also not worrying about feeding them or making sure that they do some of their chores. Notice that I wrote "some" as in the expectation that "all" is impossible. If we, as parents, don't get to release some of our stress, it just accumulates and that does no one in the family any good.

How often do we actually take vacations without the kids? How much do guilt, finances, available time, and other factors dictate our vacations as only being of the family variety?

My marriage is still new, since we married at the end of last year.
So, we are determining the structure of our lives now. Many incidents, which we call "life," have already intruded on various plans, not the least of which is my wife's own sinus surgery and painful and lengthy recovery that followed, which totally altered some of our plans this past winter and almost derailed our honeymoon. We are wise enough not to pout too much when these things happen (well, at least my wife doesn't pout), but can't help but sometimes feel a bit sorry for ourselves when they do.

My wife and I believe strongly that we need our separate time (from our sons). The boys have the pleasure or pain, depending on how they feel at any given moment, of having their dad at home all the time. I work out of the house, and take the lead role in their transportation needs, so they see more of me than they may want to at any given time.