Is Going Home a Vacation?
You’re back at your parents house. What comes next?
I’m here. Not home, because that’s where I live with my husband and strange cat. My parents made a life of moving around this country, so when they retired to Amish Country, aka Lancaster, Pennsylvania, I considered it a destination and treated it as such.
Maybe you have a real home to go back to and visit. If so, do you still call it home, even after you’ve established your own place? It’s confusing sometimes, but after twenty two years of being here in Lancaster for four night/five days, I do call it a mini-vacay.
I brought my daughter out for this visit, and since mom is having some problems with her health, she desperately wanted to visit in December, only my mother said she couldn’t handle it. I could visit, I was told. But just me. No one else, please. I did fly out here to check on mom, and I found out she wanted to stop living. Pain riddled her body every moment of the day, and dad worked on a plan to help her.
I flew home to my own life and issues, but I promised to visit every three months (it flies by!) so I’m back. My mom went into the hospital at the time I was going through my first infusions, so I couldn’t call. The energy needed to pick up and phone and talk proved to be too much. I sent flowers instead.
Now both of us are better, sort of, and it’s been the first time in ages that I’ve pushed myself to keep up with everyone. I feel split between my parents, my daughter and my brother. Everyone wants to do something, and I’m used to coming here and hanging out in sweats for the duration.
Since I’ve been here, I went to see SWEAT, the most fabulous, intense play I have ever seen in my theatrical life. Go. See it. Find out when it’s coming to you. Just know it is not a musical. Anyway, we sat in the front row, since I like to have a pure view of the actors, and we stayed afterward for a Q and A with the actors and director. A wonderful night I’ll never forget. We were all in tears by the end. So we stayed out until midnight.
A day of shopping in Lititz is a must do. I felt weary from the long day of not flying and sitting in a boring airport waiting to find any flight to Philly. Then had hoagies and Jersey Mikes with hours of catching up. I think Steph and I were talking to mom until 4:00 a.m. Friday we went looking for presents for mom who just turned 81. We had a blast at Weiss and I spent $161 at Barnes and Noble!
Saturday after shopping, we stopped at Slate, an excellent coffee and tea shop and watched the cutest Amish teens order their own cappuccinos. It’s hard not to look, but it’s rude to do that here, so I focused on ordering more caffeine to keep going. Dinner beckoned, and my sweet kid brother took us out for seafood.
Usually, I would have begged off due to the lack of energy I have, but I don’t want to disappoint any one. How much time do we have together? When will the last time be the last? I don’t know, so I’m trying to keep my adrenaline high and power through. Do you do that, too? Head home and try to squeeze in as many things and people as possible?
Is this a vacation? What do we call going home, even if it’s not really our old home? Visiting relatives sounds like when we were kids and we went to Mahanoy City and Uncle Buddy stopped by with his new wife wrapped in furs, and we had to sit and listen to the adults talk.
This has to be more than visiting. We are consciously spending time with those who matter to us. Yes, my husband is back home and working, and my other children didn’t come out. My mother needs quiet, so I’m bringing out each child on their own with me.
So tomorrow is Mass, but we decided to drive up to Centralia and see the ghost town ravaged by the fire burning in the coal mines underground. I was there 30 years ago, but it’s so close to my dad’s boyhood home that we just have to go. And so I’m going to sleep now, and tomorrow I’ll pour more coffee into this body and power through.
We fly home on Monday, so I’m losing time.
Time. I’m on the clock, and there’s only so much to do. We can only talk to mom or dad for so long, though dad is incredibly active and busy. He chews gum quickly, like a ten year old on Adderall, while my lupus ties me down. Low energy and the bed beckons. But if I nap I might not have a conversation that I’ll remember for the rest of my life.
We have to make the most of the time given to us. Even when we have no idea how much time is left on the clock.
I feel like I’m playing a football game except the game clock is hidden. None of us know what time it is in this game. Do I hike with my brother? Get Duck Donuts and relax a little, or do we push it and see the town burning into nothingness?
You know the answer as much as I do. We give of ourselves. Time is a commodity, and gifting it to people we love, forgive, argue with, laugh with, and tell endless stories with is essential.
I’ve talked about gender, war, family history, alcoholics, memes, the economy, and the border issues. We do not agree, but we’re talking. Then when it comes down to telling those stories about relatives who lived 110 years ago, I know we’ve ventured into precious territory. This is where the gold is hidden. The stories.
My daughter soaks it up, and now she wants to see the place where I spent some summers, Christmases, weddings (they were fun times ten), and for no reason at all. Sleep calls to me. Tomorrow my tired body will make the trip to the places of my youth, and my child will learn so much about her heritage and our humble beginnings in this country.
I sincerely hope you have a family to visit. They might have issues and not agree with you, but they are family. We love and forgive and find common ground.
If this is a vacation, it’s steeped in necessity. I’m not lounging on a beach, listening to the crash of wave after endless wave.
This is better. Someday I won’t be able to ask mom questions. Someday I’ll be the 81 year old who passes on the old stories. I hope for more years. More visits.
Visit.
Talk.
Understand. And love them anyway. Someday we will be the old ones, and we will want love and visits, right?
Right.
