Family Vacation: an Oxymoron

We have returned from our yearly summer vacation: one week to reunite with family (F’s), and one week to recover.

Two decades ago, when F. and I were first together, summer vacation was an eagerly-awaited tradition: convening in a cottage on Cape Cod; cooking big, lavish meals, enjoying great wine and staying up late playing games and talking. As the family mushroomed, vacations brought complications—different bedtimes, eating and sleeping habits; a lot of negotiating for a dozen-and-a-half people under one roof.

In 20 years, the ritual has lost its luster. 

Although I enjoy the closeness of family, I am weary of the complications: 18 people are a lot for one house and one dinner table. Meals are raucous (one family has three new little ones, whose whining and crying make pre-dinner cocktails medicinal.) We squeeze together, elbows in each other’s sides. I try to eat as peacefully as is possible with toddlers asking for bites of my salad. It is difficult to savor food among teenagers who eat like lab rats, grabbing seconds and thirds before anyone has finished their first small serving, filling their bellies until they are comatose.

No sooner do the teenagers scarf their dinner, than they vanish to check e-mails and post Instagrams; the adults then have the unenviable task of corralling them to do dishes, which they do feebly, leaving the kitchen a mess. The table is covered with half-filled glasses, strewn with food remnants and half-eaten bananas that draw a cavalry of fruit flies. Stray utensils, cookies and candy wrappers are underfoot.

Meanwhile, the adult children try to reconnect, constantly navigating emotional triggers, buried like landmines in innocent conversation.

I come to the shore seeking peace and restoration. But the older I get, the less tolerant I am of chaos. Perhaps I’m getting cranky in my older age. Or, perhaps I’m beginning to know myself.