With the Memorial Day holiday upon us in the U.S. — marking the unofficial, civil-calendar start of ‘summer’, regardless what the zodiac and the weather say — it seemed a good time to re-post this column by Maria that originally published May 18, 2013. — Amanda
By Maria Padhila
I set out in December to plan our vacations for the year ahead. I have relatives on other continents, and seeing them was for a while a possibility, and I was interested in making it happen. At the same time, I hadn’t planned any kind of involvement in art or other festivals that I had to be part of. It was all going to be enjoyment.
It is difficult to plan time off when you have a child in your life, with school and all their activities. Then you add another love to the mix, and it blows up exponentially.
Does this sound like ‘white whine’? Sure it does, in a world where most people get no vacation at all, and that’s just craptastic, thank you very much, you Kochs and Waltons. But think about why everyone has picnics on Labor Day: It’s a way to say hey, motherfuckers, here we are enjoying ourselves, and for all your trying you can’t stop that.
Of course, for Issac and me, our work lives intruded. Our vacation time shrank to about a week together, with some chunks of time scattered around. With Chris, it was down to a few burns. And it is May, and we still haven’t made a vacation schedule.
With the bit of time left, I made a bold declaration to Issac:
“I have been working since I was 14 (I’m 51 now, so that’s a while). I have worked when I was bleeding from miscarriages, I have worked 30-hour shifts, I have worked when I was grieving, sick, broke, when I had to hitchhike to work because I had no car, when I had to take two-hour bus rides to work.