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My family of origin never took a single vacation. I didn’t feel denied; didn’t know anything different. My father worked seven days a week and we had neither the money nor the template for how to vacation. I remember my mother saying that some people needed to vacation, as though they were somehow weaker. She, by contrast, did not. Married and with my own children, I made family vacations a priority. Did it matter that one of our kids was both anxious and hyperactive? It should have. But instead, we just kept right on planning and moving through the meltdowns.
But there was that first memorable trip when we took the family to Italy in 2002. Our high school wrestler tried to lift a SmartCar and we have the photo to prove it. We had our first round of beers together in Rome, eating filetto di baccala. At the Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago, the four of us watched Andrea Bocelli, blind since birth, carry Madame Butterfly offstage. The opera didn’t start until 10pm, which meant that at least two of us nodded off during the performance. On our bike tour through Tuscany, we ate epic caprese salads and stopped for photos at the site of a famous scene from the film Gladiator. The boys bonded on the day we went to Cinque Terra, preferring to remain on the beach in front of our hotel that featured topless young women; they wore mirrored sunglasses to shield their staring eyes.
Family travel can be tricky, particularly when one’s family is filled with strong willed and opinionated people. Someone wants to just sit and read while someone else is up for major adventure. But this trip hit the absolute right note – a blend of group and solo activity, exceptional food, short visits to museums, and a private tour of the Vatican. I can still hear the voice of the guard in the Sistine Chapel crying “Silencio!”
Perhaps the quintessential moment of the trip took place in our rented apartment in Sienna. As older siblings do, Danny played a trick on his younger brother, hiding amidst the blankets in an old wooden chest that stood in the hallway outside our bedroom. We told him it could take a while, so better get comfortable in there and be sure you’re getting enough oxygen.
“Mikey, see if you can find any board games, or anything we can do together after dinner tonight,” I called out from the kitchen.
“Where am I supposed to look?” he asked, mildly annoyed that I was assigning him a task. “I don’t know,” I said.
“Check the drawers, cupboards, that old chest in the hallway.”
Fred and I could hear the opening and closing of cabinets and held our collective breath as Mike approached the hall that held the chest that held Danny. And then we heard the piercing screams – Danny jumping out of the chest loudly yelling “BOO” and Mike’s blood curdling terror response. Somehow, we managed to hold Mike back; by then, he’d acquired both the skills and the incentive to cause major hurt to his brother.
Neither Fred nor I had a reference point for what a family vacation should look like. I guess not having expectations set us up to accept when things didn’t go well. Our two weeks in Italy, when Mike was a sophomore in high school and Danny a freshman in college, was filled with all the right ingredients for a great vacation – phenomenal food, the right amount of touring, and a ton of laughs.