Learning to Vacation

It's not rocket science, but it sometimes feels like calculus to me.

I need at least another month of this vacation stuff to get good at it.

I’ve been trying to practice doing nothing. So far I’d give myself a 3 on a scale of 1 to 10. It has been seven days. We have three more to go. There’s still a small chance I will reach enlightenment. Or at least a state of relaxation. But most days, I still have one foot in work, and the other in the land of “I should.”

There is a little part of me that genuinely worries about how difficult it is for me to shift gears. Am I a defective model, or does everyone come with this challenge? 

And it’s not just the shifting that’s difficult. It’s defining what I’m shifting to so that I can manifest that and not disappoint myself. After all, what exactly is a vacation? It’s different for everyone. If I’m honest with myself, for me it is something extremely quiet that involves a lot of books and a comfortable chair, preferably close to the water. Much too quiet for some people, but as it happens, extremely necessary for me. I need a full-stop break from noise.

I think I set myself up with an unrealistic expectation for this trip by calling it a vacation in the first place. It was wishful thinking on my part; I thought if I called it a vacation, it would be. But I made some incorrect assumptions.

First, work: I thought I’d finish a string of close deadlines and be free and clear to spend a week visiting my family and going to the beach a lot.

However, I conveniently blinded myself to the fact that I would still have three deadlines to meet on this trip – enough work to keep me at the desk at least a couple hours a day.

Also: August lies ahead. It’s the busiest time of the year on the Vineyard, and I have events to prepare for (that means emails, of course!). There’s a reason that my colleagues and I usually don’t take vacations in the summer; it’s just not practical. But I was being stubborn on this one. I wanted to be in Delaware for my Dad’s birthday, and I felt like after a very long winter, spring, and early summer, that I desperately needed a break of more than just a couple days. It takes an entire day for us to get down here and another to get back, so to turn around after only a couple days feels silly.  

Secondly, visiting my family comes with responsibilities – responsibilities that I wouldn’t trade in a million years, because they wouldn’t exist if I didn’t have my 94-year-old father still in my life, living in the house I own, and my only sister living near him so that I am able to visit them both at the same time. I like spending time with them both together, alone, and with my husband. The four of us especially enjoy our evening ritual of getting together for dinner every night. My sister has us down to her house many nights, and that gives me a break from making dinner. And just to be clear, my Dad and sister are really and truly undemanding.

Still I struggle – even with them, the people I love the most – with over-stimulation. After a day of outlet-shopping in the rain (traffic, people, stuff) and a return to too many work emails, I nearly melted down. I think my sister thought I was crazy, but really I was just tired and frustrated. And still in need of down-time.

As an aside, one good thing: After six years and more than 20 trips to Delaware with me, my husband finally got himself to a golf course down here this week – twice. A few years back he found a good gym nearby (he’s a life-long gym rat, unlike his wife). So now he’s carved out what he needs for his well-being while we’re in Delaware, and he’s not afraid to grab that time for himself. He’s also managed to help my Dad with yard work. Both of these things somehow relieve me of pressures (all self-imposed, mind you). Pressure to make sure my husband is also enjoying his time down here, and pressure to do more to work on the house while we are here.

Today was my best day so far. I puttered, with Dad puttering nearby, making it possible for me to feel like we were in each other’s company without having to do anything special. (Actually Dad was doing more than puttering – he was digging holes and planting shrubs in the garden.) My husband went off to play golf. My sister was down the street puttering at her house, texting occasionally.

I sat on the screened porch – after dusting and Fantastic-ing some of the surfaces that needed cleaning – and updated my checkbook, read an essay Dad had given me, drank coffee, read a chapter in my book, and rubbed Farmer’s tummy with my toes. The porch, with its breezes and wrap-around sunlight, the view of Dad’s garden (and Dad working) in dappled shade, and the gentle cacophony of crickets and frogs and birds, is my favorite room “in” the house.

Earlier in the morning, I had wandered around Dad’s yard with the clippers and gathered enough bobs and bits to make a flower arrangement, one that satisfied me with the way it reflected this particular moment in the color spectrum in Dad’s garden – a mauve-y, plummy, lavender-grey and dusty-‘70s-green kind of palette.

Later, my husband and I drove into Lewes and picked up some beautiful veggies and fruits at Ray’s produce stand at The Brush Factory.

We made a quick stop at the gorgeous Lewes Public Library, which we’d never been inside, and then parked downtown right outside St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, where we were married and where many of my relatives are buried. We said hello to my mom and grandmother at their graves and walked around to note the headstones of my great uncles, my second cousins, my great grandparents and my great-great grandparents. We left the other relatives for another day (there are more than 100 in the small cemetery).

The four of us had dinner at our house – roasted tamari salmon and summer veggie fried rice – and got Dad to answer some questions we had about relatives in the graveyard. It was a good day.

The other highlight so far was a beach excursion last weekend. My sister, with her state park pass, took us to the beach at Cape Henlopen State Park, where the ocean swells and wide sandy beach draw every kind of sunner and surfer. Ever-prepared (this is my camper/skier/marathoner sister – again, nothing like me), she had all the stuff, like beach chairs and umbrellas, that we needed. We had books, we all took a turn in the surf, and it was a perfect low-key way to be in each other’s company. We are planning another beach day tomorrow, and I’m looking forward to that.

On Sunday morning I’m going to go to church with Dad. He always attends the 8 a.m. service at St. Peter’s and sits in the front row. (I think this is about the only time he wears his hearing aids.) I wish I’d been there the day the pastor announced Dad’s 94th birthday - and that he might also be the only member of the congregation who had also attended St. Peter’s more than 90 years ago. That’s something. He’s something.

I’ve been wanting to accompany Dad when we’ve been here on previous trips, but I’m always too tired from staying up late. It’s a small measure of progress that we’ve moved our bedtime up just a hair on this trip. Though I still find so much comfort in reading at night, especially if I’ve been on the computer and need to put some time between bed and the blue light.

I think a complete hiatus from the blue light would probably be the ultimate vacation for me (duh). Geez, maybe vacation is not rocket science. But I wonder why it still sometimes feels like calculus to me.

P.S. Farmer does not share my problem.

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