B-Rant

- submitted by L. Keenan on 04/28/2008

Relax, Your Vacation is Finally Over!

By Linda Keenan

I woke up in a luxurious mood today, after a weekend of recovering from an exhausting, chaotic week. That week, known and feared by modern parents everywhere, is "vacation week" (cue irksome finger quotes here). I don't know how yours was this spring season, but mine was brutal.

Vacation week is the time when moms and dads who've grown accustomed to childcare are thrust back into the maw of ceaseless, and often outlandish kiddie demands. K'eye have a juicebox? K'eye have Wii now and will you play it with me? K'eye go to Disneyland, this minute? K'eye buy that elephant over there?

Moms or the handful of Dads who've ever cared for children full-time know exactly when vacation week is, and have it marked in angry red concentric circles months in advance. I don't want to generalize for all men, but I suspect the Dads who haven't done the full-on childcare think this is faintly or outright ridiculous, until they have to contend with vacation week themselves, of course.

There are various strategies for filling vacation week. A lot of people travel, some to their parents, with the implicit hope that someone, anyone will help entertain their kids for 14 hours a day. This has its own perils. Some parents find that Grandma and Grandpa would rather explore, let's imagine, Kabbalah or some other Boomer-like pursuit than care for little Liam and Emma. Others get the "just let Liam and Emma play by themselves! We never played with you!"

It sounds great in theory, or in nostalgia-heavy books like the Three-Martini Playdate, with quaint little pencil-drawings of childhood-past. But that blissfully apathetic era of parenting is sadly over. On the other end of the spectrum are the relatives who take over completely, and trample on any parenting principle you might be adhering to. Either way, relaxing, vacation-like, it's not.

My own strategy was divide and conquer: invite friends and their kids to visit in hopes that they would occupy each other. The result? The kids swing from ignoring each other, to delighting each other, to gnawing on each others digits (cue uncontrollable screaming here), often within the span of a few minutes. We had planned trips to museums, but as my late mother would say, Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

Those museums during vacation-week are like the stampede scene from The Lion King, with little limbs periodically getting crushed and the noise-level approaching jack-hammer decibels.

Then, finally, after many hours of kiddie-tainment activities comes sleep-time. Unless you have a McMansion, and I do not, the kids cannot be easily separated at sleep-time, and if you think you are going to be able to kick back and watch House undisturbed at your usually Three-Martini hour, forget about it.

At times during vacation-week, I think about my child's teachers, neither of whom have children. I imagine them kicking back with their martinis and chortling at our fecklessness. Do I resent them? Not at all. They richly deserve vacation week, a real one, and no air quotes either.

Linda Keenan is a contributing writer at Burbia. Linda worked 7 years as a head writer/senior producer for various programs on CNN. Before that she worked as a writer/producer for Bloomberg TV. She now writes satire, primarily about parenting culture, at Thoroughly Modern Mommy....read more rants