There Is No Perfect Time to Take the Vacation

There is no perfect time to take the vacation.

There will always be something in the way. Money may be tight. Work schedules may be complicated. Somebody may be tired, busy, unhappy, or completely uninterested in cooperating.

If you wait until everything lines up perfectly, you may wait so long that you miss the opportunity to make the memories altogether.

I learned that one year just after Christmas.

I was in that slump that sometimes follows the holidays. The decorations were still there, but the excitement was over. My husband worked out of town three weeks out of every month, and he had left to go back to work. My three oldest children were college-aged. They had gone to spend time with friends and would soon be heading back out of town for school.

That left me at home with four little people—and a very large empty space in my heart.

We need an adventure.

I had absolutely no idea what that adventure was supposed to look like.

I told the kids to grab a bag, pack an extra set of clothes, a swimsuit, and pajamas, and get in the car.

That was the entirety of my planning.

I didn’t have an itinerary. I had not made reservations. I wasn’t even completely sure where we were going. I only knew that I wanted to get out of Texas for a few days.

So we left.

The first day, we ended up in New Orleans. By day three, we were exploring the beaches near Biloxi, Mississippi, where we saw some of the most stunning sunsets I have ever witnessed. Eventually, we made our way to Pensacola, Florida.

Yes, it was December.

Yes, it was winter.

And yes, we still thoroughly enjoyed every beach we found along the way.

That spontaneous, wildly underprepared trip was when I began to understand that the beach fed something in my soul. It was the beginning of many, many, many beach trips to come.

Was I prepared for that first one?

Not even a little bit.

I had not even arranged a place for us to stay the first night. We did a great deal of improvising. We changed plans, figured things out as we went, and almost certainly forgot things we needed.

It was still worth taking the trip.

I am wiser now. I know that a well-planned vacation means less mental load for Mom during the actual vacation.

Mom often carries the largest share of that load. We become the keepers of the reservations, medications, snacks, swimsuits, chargers, schedules, backup clothes, and seventeen other things nobody remembers until they need them.

Over the years, I have learned how to plan ahead and offload some of that work before the trip begins.

But I have also learned that no amount of preparation can create a perfect vacation.

Things will be forgotten. Plans will change. Weather will refuse to cooperate. Somebody will get cranky, and somebody will need a bathroom twelve minutes after the last stop. That is traveling with a family.

That does not mean the trip is ruined.

Moms have to be resilient. We make backup plans, but we also learn when to give up on the plan and do something else. I don’t think my children remember what we forgot to pack or how many times I changed my mind about where we were going. They remember New Orleans, the sunsets in Biloxi, and going to the beach in December.

That is enough for me.