Mothering After Croatia

My sister-in-law recently returned from a 10-day trip to Croatia. She and her sister planned a visit there to reunite with friends they know from a traveling dance company. I looked forward to hearing about the trip, and she shared lots of fascinating details. However, hours after our conversation, the things that stuck with me the most had nothing to do with anything touristy.

Rachel, my sister-in-law, has four daughters - ages 8, 7, 4, and 2. For this 10-day trip, they were in the care of my brother, a great dad. But my point is that they were NOT in Rachel's care. She had quite a "vacation" from everyday mothering. She shared with me that she had a lot of trouble readjusting to her role upon "re-entry" to the U.S. and to serving her four girls. As she described the trouble, I envisioned her walking around in sort of a daydream-ish fog. Daydreaming about the sites she saw and the experiences she had, and the break from crazy responsibility. Fog like the fog when you're awakened at three a.m. by a screaming toddler and can't shake off the sleep but have to.

Along with their hosts, Rachel and her sister visited a water park and had a blast. "It was so different!" Rachel told me. "Any other time, I'd be looking to meet the needs of my children and help them have a good time and keep them safe. But that day, I just went on the rides myself and had so much fun!" I could almost feel the fog rolling into my own brain and heart. I could totally imagine all the feelings she must have had once her trip was over. It's hard to mother! So... to avoid terrible re-entry scenarios - what is the answer? Never vacation? I don't think that's a good answer. I'm wondering instead how to work more fun into the days, weeks, months, and years of raising kids. Certainly some personalities are better at this than others. When Rachel described the water park outing, I recalled this summer when we went to the community pool and I got my two eldest children to go on the big water slide with me. Because I wanted to go! But in other situations, I think I miss out on some fun myself. Sometimes I just don't ask for the short, even 1- or 2-hour "vacations" that help me keep my wits about me and I NEED TO. Other times, I must figure out how to let loose more myself. And for the rare times when I get to jet off to Europe (when will that be?) I think there should be "re-entry" programs for moms similar to those I went through at the end of mission trips.

Returning to the U.S. from India, we had to be prepared to enter a grocery store, for example, with all its abundance and NOT flip into judgmental mode: "WHY do we need NINETY-FOUR kinds of cereal? They don't have enough GRAIN in parts of India, and here we are with FOUR FLAVORS OF CHEERIOS???" In a program to help moms return from long and luxurious vacations, we might need to ease them into a kitchen setting where dinner is cooking, the table is being set, the dryer buzzer just went off, baby is crying and two or more other children are all calling "MOM, LOOK!" simultaneously and calmly handle it all without longing too too much for a faraway fantasy locale. Come to think of it, I'd like that kind of training even if I don't get an actual vacation.