Life's No VACATION

Before I had my son, long before, I had this fantasy that when I had kids I was going to do all the things that I never got to do when I was little. When I was a kid we couldn't afford to do much after my father died so all the plans that we had made before he died we never did. The family vacation to disneyland never happened, the vacation to Marine World never happened and so many things that we planned as a family never really happened. I didn't really fret over it or worry about it because even though we never had those family vacations my sister and I had fun just playing with our cousins over the summer riding bikes and eating junk food and having picnics in the front yard and even selling lemonaid in the front of the house. So, I never worried about the vacations that we were not going on. Although, honestly, when my cousins went to Hawaii and Disneyland one summer I was kind of jealous. I wish that we could go but I understood why we couldn't and although I missed them for the two weeks that they were gone we still had fun when they got back. 

I wanted to take all these vacations and more when I had kids. I actually told my sister one day when I was around 13 and she was 10 that when we had kids we would all go on family vacations with everyone. We would take our mom on the vacations that she never had with all of our kids. At that time I fooshily thought that I would have a big family, six or seven kids for me back then was my goal along with a good job to support all these kids. Funny how it didn't quite work out that way. But, nonetheless we thought that it was a great idea and couldn't wait until that day came. 

That day came when I was 41 years old and had my son. My sister by that time had her 3 boys and we still hadn't been on any vacations. It's ten years later since I had him and life kind of got in the way of all of our vacation plans. We sort of had one, ok, not really, but the closest we got to some sort of "vacation" when we were homeless and stayed in hotels, before then I had only stayed overnight in one with my grandmother at a convention near the airport. I had to think of something positive in a negative situation so I pretended with my then 4 year old that we were on a vacation. We had the suitcases, some clothes, and the car. We even at one point had stuff tied to the roof of the car like they do on some of the vacation movies I had seen on TV. So, for 4 months we pretended as we went from hotel to hotel, some cheap, some more expensive and some in the middle, that we were on an adventure. In a way it was an adventure. 

Once we found an apartment we stayed for a little bit and moved around the corner to a little, very little, bigger one. I was thinking that now maybe since we are more settled and my mom was in pretty good health that we could have a real small vacation. But, then life got in the way again. Jobs were lost, money got tight and times got harder yet again. So, the closest thing to a vacation we got was going to the marina to see the ducks for a while. Then other things happened also. My mom got sick and her health will never be the same. Walking down the stairs is not an easy task for her anymore so basically she is stuck in the house most of the time and some of the time she goes on the porch. She will not tackle the stairs and the only way she will is when she has to go to doctor's appointments. I really feel sad for her. She used to love being outside. We all loved to be outside in my grandma's garden. But, for now I guess it is what it is. I just hope that one day soon that we all can have a vacation together. 

Or maybe even get out to the park together, something we all took for granted until the day came when it was so hard to do.