Sometimes even parents also need a break
Everyone seems to be talking of parents taking a guilt-free, adults-only holiday — especially after the stress of trying to juggle keeping themselves and their families Covid-free, working from home and supervising children’s online classes.
Sure, they deserve a break, we say now, but did we feel the same half-a-century ago when our parents were completely overworked and stressed out too?
Among my earliest memories are occasions when we three siblings were left in our own home under the supervision of aunts or uncles or parked with our grandmother in the family home. No, our parents were not off on a second honeymoon, nor were they taking a much-needed break from us (“quality couples-time” was a concept that didn’t appear until much later): father was attending the annual Police Week celebrations in the capital of the state, and he took mother along to meet her sisters and their families there during the day and accompany father to the parties in the evening.
Since I was the youngest of the three, I must have been pretty cranky without mother, but my brother and sister did a splendid job of distracting me with activities around the house and the garden. Thus, there were trees to climb — and fall out from. There were garden creatures to inspect and study and even bring into the house now that the rules could be bent a little, since we were the ones who interpreted the rules for our “minders” and said, “You can check, daddy and mummy allow it.”
Knowing relatives better
Brother and sister had perfected their wide-eyed innocent looks as they invented “allowances” that wouldn’t survive a minute when our parents were around — and I was kept in another room lest I give the game away. All of us knew the adults in charge wouldn’t check with our parents by making a long-distance “trunk” call. It was during these “getaways” of our parents that we got to know our relatives better — and they got to know us too.
Big brother discovered in himself a talent for target practice, taking potshots at birds and animals with his catapult — and then taking his first steps on his way to becoming the creative chef he is now.
Big sister practised her story telling on me and found that she had quite a dramatic flair with words and actions — and soon enough, she came into her own and kept roomfuls of adults and her own handful of children enthralled and eventually enlightened. For me, however, the end result of being away from my parents led, in adulthood.
How could a spa break or a drive along a beach with another adult, be more fun than the chaos, excitement and sheer joy of a “routine” morning walk with a dog pulling in one direction, a child in the other and both adults trying to keep up without losing limbs or minds in the process?
There was no way that I would forego a single twitch of our pet’s eyebrow that indicated what she wished to say without words; there was no way I could leave our son to his own devices when I would much rather be a part of his activities!
So, we didn’t take a holiday as a couple until there was an empty nest and we were once more a couple. And even then, this tired twosome tends to head first towards our “child” to make it a threesome/foursome again, before going on to other people or places we’d like to see.