NO Says Jane Warren
WHEN MY daughter was tiny I took a short break to Ireland, thinking this would recharge my batteries, and missed her every day. When my children were both at primary school I spent a week away from them in Canada visiting old friends and every moment was underscored by the knowledge of how much they would have loved being on that trip.
I determined never to go away again while they were still living at home so each year we spend a week self-catering on tiny St Agnes, Isles of Scilly, where time stands still. It starts with a relentless eight-hour drive from Sussex to Cornwall and a notoriously wild three-hour Atlantic crossing but once there my son runs wild and barefoot on the unspoiled isle and my daughter and I paint, talk and walk. There is nothing better, despite the piles of laundry and full-on parenting involved.
The extent of a childhood is just 18 summers. Why would I want to squander this precious time without them – especially in the years when children still find joy in parental companionship? Bea is 13 and still thinks going on holiday with her brother Willem and me is an incomparable treat.
How many more years will she feel this way? I don’t want to miss a moment by taking for granted their love of family times. I spent my child-free years travelling the world but after having children in my late 30s my priorities changed. Satisfied that I had indulged my urge to travel I embarked on the journey of motherhood aware that this was going to be a fleeting and exhausting adventure of an entirely different sort.
And I want to squeeze the most I can into it, including the core memories that holidays offer. That’s why in two weeks’ time I’m taking my children on a seven-day adventure holiday to the French Alps with La Source, a company that specialises in family experiences for independent travellers, and why for the past few years I have taken each child on an annual solo “mummy trip” – to explore world war battlefields and the Bayeux Tapestry with Willem and to Barcelona, Marrakesh and mountaineering in the Lake District with Bea.
There are no other people in the world I would rather share these moments and nothing I would rather spend my money on, including upgrading my old campervan.
These trips allow precious one-on-one time, adapting each day to them, and storing up memories that will inform how they see the world in future – along with the deep knowledge of how loved they have been.
I know that each year I choose not to sign up for the four-day European tour with my choir is a year that takes me one step closer to the decades when I won’t have two small hands to hold as we explore the world together. I’m in no rush to spend time apart from my children. It’s going to happen soon enough.