Last week was our big family beach trip, and I know that I’ll be talking about it with friends and colleagues back home. What will I say? How do I communicate without burdening others how exhausted I was from constantly parenting and having too little time for the things that I hoped would rejuvenate me? How do I describe that fatigue alongside the handful of moments where I was able to laugh until I cried, where I felt so connected to others, and where I was simply at peace?
For the past year, I’ve been suffering from burnout in my career and as a mother, and I had hoped that this vacation would help me reset. I successfully put work completely out of my mind, but I found myself in parenting mode almost all the time, and it took a toll on me. As I wrestled a diaper onto my daughter the afternoon before checkout, I sighed with exhaustion, “Don’t worry, honey, the trip will be over soon.” My husband was there, and I knew how hurtful the words would be as they tumbled out of my mouth. But I was angry at him for constantly leaving the cognitive load of parenting on me this trip. My husband rolled his eyes at me and sighed. I ended up crying on the balcony with my sister-in-law.
This incident, the turmoil of feelings behind it–that is NOT what I want to surface first when I remember this trip. But being able to reflect on the trip through writing and hold those feelings from a distance allows me to remember the best moments more fondly:
Sitting on my bodyboard in the wet sand of the shallow tide. My husband is sitting beside me, and both of our shoulders are touching our daughter’s. She is just starting to accept the waves, even giggle at them when they tickle her knees. An hour before she was crying with worry as her mother and father took turns playing in the waves and reassuring her with a kiss each time the tide took us back to her.
Sitting under a beach tent watching my daughter play with sand toys. Looking at the fullness of her cheek and her long eyelashes as she sat quietly, contemplatively, perhaps even seriously beside me scooping sand with her yellow shovel. Breathing in the peace of this completely ordinary moment. Being able to just leave her be to enjoy a conversation with my brother in law.
An evening on the beach with my sisters-in-law. An errand for groceries turned into a quest for fun without kids and husbands. A failed search for karaoke turned into a stealth mission to sneak beach chairs out of the house for drinks on the beach. We talked about life and relationships, laughed until we cried, and tugged at each other’s hearts when sharing our struggles. We saw each other in a profoundly different way than we had in our many years of knowing each other. This connection is one of the parts of the trip that I’ll treasure most.
So how was my vacation? I'm glad we went. I'm glad for the memories. Many brutal, but some priceless. And just having priceless ones is what matters.