Of Vacations

Pilot once famously asked, "What is truth?"

I now ask (not quite so famously), "What is vacation?"

Or, more postmodernly, "What is vacation to you?"

I have an amazing ideal in my mind which every vacation tries to live up to: that of our family vacations at Uncle Joe's camp in Maine. We'd go up there, to the middle of nowhere, with banana boxes full of books and activities and projects. Then we'd stay at that little cabin for two or three weeks at a time, only venturing forth for yardsaling. We'd sleep as late as we wanted, then spend the day reading, swimming, reading, swimming, Daddy would read aloud at night while we worked on puzzles, and then we'd go back to our own books and read as late as we wanted. Occasionally this rhythm was punctuated (how's that for mixing metaphors!) by family games or a magic show or a birthday party (if we were there in mid-August). Absolute bliss.

So since then, my ideal vacation has been one in which there is limitless time in which to do... NOTHING. There are no responsibilities, no schedule, not even any people (family doesn't count). But there's lots of time time time to read read read or do whatever strikes my fancy (like blog!).

Recently I was stating this to a friend who was surprised by this reality. For her the ideal vacation includes lots of traveling around and seeing people. While working, she's pretty home-bound, so when vacation hits, she wants to be up and doing ("with a heart for any fate"), seeing friends all over the place.

HUH!

So there you have it: another instance of different strokes for different folks, I guess. What about for you?