Rowing

Today I watched a couple walking down the street near Walmart. She was pushing a baby in an umbrella stroller and trying to make her little girl – maybe 3 or 4 years old – hold on to the side of the stroller which the little girl wouldn’t do so her mom bopped her on the head every few steps. The dad walked a little ahead, his hands in his pockets, his expression grim, not catastrophe grim, bored grim, like there was really nothing to feel good about and sure not anything to look forward to. No one talked.

They need a vacation, I thought to myself. They need to get in a car and drive out into the country, roll the windows down, stop at Dairy Queen, and, when it gets dark, roll into a big chain hotel and check in, let the little girl be too loud in the pool, order a pizza, and watch movies all night sitting in bed with big white covers and a thousand pillows. They need to be away from this Walmart and free from their grim silence.

I don’t know. Maybe this family just got back from France and I was completely misreading their situation but I don’t think so.

I’m betting they’ve never had a vacation. Saying that, I realize how superficial I sound. As if a vacation is such a critical thing for a person or a family. After all, there is housing and education, clothing and food, necessities, things people need to live. Vacation, well, that sounds like a luxury.

When I got divorced, I lost many things. My spouse, obviously, but I also lost his family which was very sad because I loved them. I lost furniture and photographs, friends and respect. I lost time, which is hard to explain but people who’ve divorced will know what I mean. I lost the infinite luxury of time. And I also lost vacation.

After my divorce, I didn’t take a vacation that didn’t involve visiting relatives for a very long time. Finally, when my daughter was 10, I decided that we would take a vacation at the same very rustic resort in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula that I visited with my family when I was a kid.  It was 300 miles away.

I was afraid of driving there, afraid of having a flat tire mostly, that having become the biggest fear of my post-divorce life, a flat tire, my car on the side of the road with people speeding by and no one stopping to help or someone stopping to help who was scary. I was afraid of having gotten the reservation wrong and showing up on the wrong date. I was worried about not having enough money and forgetting how to row a boat. I was afraid to sleep alone in a cabin in the woods even though my little girl was in a bed just across the room.

And then we checked in, heard the screen door slam that first time, looked out over the still black lake with the sun setting and the few hardy fishermen silhouetted in the distance. We unpacked our swim suits and sweatshirts, unloaded our groceries, put the package of donuts in the middle of the tiny dining room table and began our vacation.  It was rich and beautiful. That we had – just the two of us – my single parent self and my single-parented child – gone on vacation in this one-room cabin in the U.P. was as delicious and freeing as a trip around the world in a private yacht.

I came back a changed person.

I had become a person who could go somewhere, one who could leave somewhere. I was no longer bolted to the floor of my divorce, no longer waiting for a flat tire. I had become a person who goes on vacation.

The thinking that I did that week on that lake changed the course of my life. I wouldn’t have thought the same thoughts back home, I’d have been too focused on walking down the street, a grim expression on my face. So I am a believer in vacation as a balm to wounds, a potent elixir to ailments people might not know they have. Vacation heals, cures, restores.

I wish I could find the grim family I saw this afternoon and hand them a little box that, when opened, blossomed into a beautiful vacation. That’s what I wish.

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Photo by Oliver Cole on Unsplash