What’s Your Dream Vacation?
As I savor the last few weeks of winter, and wrap myself up in the last lazy moments of this vacation, I find myself dreaming of the next vacation. It will be another 3 months until our next scheduled uninterrupted break (but I’ve written about our priority to build in rest regularly in our nights and weekends). It will be a quiet week away by the beach with my sisters, their families and our parents, a week we all look forward to each year.
Traveling has always been a love and a priority for me. I lived abroad as a child and traveled both for work and for play as a young adult. The world became a mirror through which I got to know myself better. Traveling during my youth facilitated some of my closest friendships to this day. A month long medical mission trip in Tanzania, weeks of medical mission in Mexico, Guatemala and Taiwan. Adventures in Hawaii, hiking the volcanoes and inadvertently trespassing to swim under a waterfall. Moments, removed from our everyday lives, that we hear our own thoughts and strangers help us see ourselves in a fresh light.
My husband and I are eager to share with our kids our love of travel, simultanously expanding their world while bringing them into more intimate relationship with their own history and cultures. We had a pretty dreamy vacation in Portugal when the kids were still toddler age and are planning another international trip later this year.
I stumbled upon Joanna Goddard’s recent post and found my heart nodding enthusiastically yes! A week buried in books, consuming hot caffeinated beverages and red wine, discussing the latest cosy romance/mystery by Jesse Suntanto or poignant memoir with my sisters sounds heavenly! A beach locale during off season a la a Nancy Meyers movie? Or a ski cabin in the mountains? Or an entirely different backdrop half way around the world? We could easily parlay this into a weekend of movie marathons, chatting into the night as we did as children, downing beverages (perhaps now spiked with a splash of Bailey’s).
My dream vacation
As I’ve grown older, my dream vacation is not a place or even an activity. My dream vacation is defined by who I am with. An introvert to the core, and shaped by the low key weekend getaways during the pandemic, I found my happy place defined by slow moments with the kids and my husband, sisters, parents, removed from daily life, anywhere from a cabin in the mountains, to a seaside walk, to just a weekend at grandma’s house.
These are the types of experiences I do not want to miss out on as I continue this current job. Building, nurturing and reigniting these important relationships are a crucial part of human well-being. Physically removed from the stresses of every day life, my loved ones and I can share unexpected moments of discovery and savor uninterrupted intimacy. Planning a dream vacation for me is protecting time to connect with myself and those I love, untied to location. The best things to do, anywhere I go, is to hold their hands, listen to their chatter and indulge in the dessert of the day.
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