Family Beach Vacation – Post I
We are trying something new this year. We are away for an entire month. Every year we spend some time up near my parents’ house by the beach. When my  children were younger we came for a week, then ten days. Last year it was over two weeks.
As anyone with a large family will tell you, once you are packing for two weeks, another two makes very little difference. We are fortunate that my parents generously rented us a house. There is just no way we would have been able to spend the month living with my parents. Â I want them to still love my children – and me – by the end of the month!
I am looking forward to getting settled and being able to stay that way, even if for a little while. Having said that, family vacation doesn’t generally feel like much of a vacation for me.
I have also upped the ante by deciding that this is the time and place for potty training! (That’s a  post for another time.)  This year I am adding to the challenges of being with my relatives, hosting other guests, trying to give the kids routine, limitations in kosher food and the sand, sand, sand. I also have to continue to work from home while away.
Still, with all of this going on, the biggest challenge for me while away is not finding time to myself.  Who is used to that anyway? So far I have logged one hour of blissful reading ALONE in the sun, and a whole fifteen minutes on the beach walking with my husband while the children circled and hovered.
What is harder is finding my relationship with Hashem here. The beach in New England is relaxing and beautiful, clean and charming, with p0lite tourists and locals. But there isn’t a Jewish community, people to enjoy Shabbat with, etc. Â Our second day here my husband and two sons walked 4.5 miles each way to to a Chabad minyan without carrying even a water bottle. While my husband may want to try it again, the twins won’t, and I am not so keen on spending Shabbat until 3:30 with six kids by myself.
Finding G-d in the gloriousness of the ocean views isn’t too hard in a spiritual sense, but carving out time for rituals, davening and Torah is a bigger challenge here. Dressing the way I do sticks out A LOT. I have already had to answer “kippah questions”. Maybe this year, the first with no babies in the family, I may just find the right religious balance.
As for beach adventures so far, I missed the giant spider crab with her babies yesterday that my kids found, so I have no good photo of it for you. I can’t tell you how happy that makes me.
I can TOTALLY relate to this. My husband goes with some of our kids every year to an idyllic cottage by a Canadian lake, and for the past 5 years I haven’t joined him. It’s just too overwhelming having no time to myself, having 6 kids on top of me 24/7 for several weeks. Though next year, I will be joining them, it looks like. It’s hard there, but I’ve finally concluded it’s too big of a shame to miss such important annual family time.
Maybe you could make a babysitting toranut for your older kids so you get some time? When I visit my parents in the summer, I actually hire a babysitter for the morning hours so I can get some breathing room.
This is the first year I have not arranged to have a mother’s helper with me. It’s actually a lot LESS work! I am so happy to not be managing someone else’s teenager away from home in addition to my own children. Having said that, I do have to spend some time scheduling, thinking ahead and making sure to arrange for help. I finally printed and posted a calendar for the month we are here this morning. No doubt blogging helped me sort it out. Now I can manage the many activities better and hopefully get Abby, local babysitter extraordinaire, to help me feel the vacation a bit more!
For years, up until I was 13, my family would pack up every summer and head up to a bungalow colony in the Catskill Mountains. While my father worked in the city during the week and only came up for the weekends, and while my brother and I ran wild in the pre-cellphone era, my mom did the shopping, cleaned the bungalow, did the laundry, cooking and made sure my brother and I had sandwiches and fruit to take to the pool. She got about 1/2 a day to relax with her embroidery.
On the other hand, I have never taken my kids away for more than a few days, and then it was to a family hotel where I didn’t have to worry about shopping, laundry, etc.
In spite of all the hard work, I wish I had done this with my kids. Some memories need to be worked on, hard.
What a wonderful way of putting it. You are so right. (Says the woman who finally got a decent night’s sleep.) I do get tremendous pleasure from the memories that they are creating. The bond it creates with my parents is immeasurable. I think I can only appreciate that once things get set up. I lined up shoes this morning; made me feel better for the three minutes they will stay that way.