The Vacation Vortex

It’s coming soon…The Vacation Vortex.  That’s when you and your entire family get sucked into a dizzying whirlpool of getaway plans and family visits.  Or getaway from the family visits, depending on your status.  Every year there’s a local ritual, whereon you ask everyone you know what they are doing this summer, then nod dutifully while they recite their complicated plans (“…five days in Sardinia and then the kids are going to spend a week with grandma in Normandy while I paint my cousin’s house in the Ardeche…”), and then promptly forget everything they just told you.

But it really doesn’t matter because the only thing you need to know is that in July and August you won’t see anyone.  You may bump into the occasional lone wolf loping through the ghost town that was once your bustling neighborhood, but basically, you are on your own.  Not that anyone actually takes two months of vacation, but since they are staggered throughout July and August, and since kids and parents often fly off in different directions at different times, and stores close for at least three weeks, it feels like everyone but you is doing precisely that. 

When you live abroad, the Vortex tends to whirl at an even higher speed, because you have to fly all over the world to even find the family that will slowly drive you crazy over the course of your stay.  Not that you don’t want to see your family, but if you are from a faraway place like California and it’s a once-a-year reunion, it tends to get rather intense.  It’s one thing to visit with your parents for an evening or a weekend, and it’s another to spend two weeks with them 24-7.

But I can’t complain.  While my carbon footprint this summer will be off the charts, my frequent flyer millage will climb ever higher until I can take yet more flights to more faraway places.  When I get back I will have reconnected with my Southern California roots and remember why it was that I left in the first place.  I will cherish my French suburb with renewed enthusiasm and savor the taste of espresso at the coffee stand at the covered market.  My apartment will seem so quiet and welcoming.  I will be at peace.  But then it will be time for the rentrée….

Ah, Summer in the Country

Back from three weeks with the in-laws in the Southwest. Doing the summer thang, French style. Which, if you are married, generally consists of going out into some idyllic French countryside where inevitably there is an old house that once belonged to great-great-uncle Gaston’s cousin’s niece. Up until somewhere in the 20th century, the French population was overwhelmingly rural, as the economy ran on agriculture. This means that if you scratch your average Parisian, and he or she will shed farmer blood. I was once at a dinner party with some friends and we started talking roots and it turned out every person at the table came from farming or winemaking families. And then there was me with my grampa Meyer, the hat-maker from Kiev.

I don’t know if this is really the reason why so many French people seem to gather at an ancestor’s house in the country, but it seems like there must be some good reason why otherwise intelligent people would subject themselves to long, juicy stretches of summer vacation filled with endless visits with psychotic cousins, screaming kids, grumpy grandfathers, and dubious family friends. Naturally, there’s an up side: you get to eat long, leisurely meals of good old-fashioned food, which in France is no small thing. There is always a quorum of at least 10 around the dinner table, which makes for a festive atmosphere, particularly if there are several bottles of good wine on the table, which is usually the case.

“But who makes all that food?” you ask. Now, that’s a very interesting question. In general, if you happen to have two X chromosomes, you are on 24-hour call for kitchen duty. Mami might plan the menus and hand out the recipes, but she is much too old to actually do all the cooking and cleaning, and who can blame her, you’d have to be Superwoman to be able to handle feeding 10+ hungry mouths morning, noon, and night for weeks on end. So you help. You chop, you simmer, you set the table, you take the clean stuff out of the dishwasher. The least you can do, no? After all, you are not even picking up the bill. And then there are all those kids. Your own, the crazy cousin’s, the friends. Who’s going to watch them in the pool? Suddenly, everyone is busy doing other things (sleeping off lunch, primarily). Anyone with any sense has delicately left the scene because they know what is about to ensue. That leaves the idiotic American daughter-in-law who has read all those articles about pool safety.

And so, the afternoon drones on, with the delightful screeching of young voices bouncing off the water and into your ears. Slowly, the others come out of hiding, stretching and yawning, looking for a good game of scrabble. By this time, the Pool Watcher is so stressed out she’s ready to bite someone’s head off, especially when one of the Nappers starts going on about how peaceful it is here in the country and how nice it is to catch up on their sleep. But all things come to and end. The crazy cousin, as usual, storms off after someone inadvertently insults her, taking her noisy offspring with her. The kids’ lips start turning blue and after much coaxing, come out of the pool. The Pool Watcher finally has a chance to soak up some sun in a lounge chair.

But by then its almost time for dinner.

Now I’m not complaining (OK, a little). I know that most of my American friends would kill for a week in some lovely stone house in the French countryside. Or two. But definitely not three. Oh, no—definitely not three.

Les Grandes Vacances

OK, here it is—The vacation post.

It's July, and life is slowly seeping out of my suburban neighborhood. Not exactly a bubbling cauldron of activity at any time of the year, in July what little buzz there is fades out and an alarming silence sweeps through the streets. There are no kids screaming in the park, there are hardly any old ladies rolling their caddies down the sidewalk, and the stores on the one "busy" street are closing down one after an other. It's as if the entire neighborhood is entering into a state of deep hibernation. By August, all will be still and the urban pulse will have slowed to a couple of beats per minute.

It's peaceful here, I'll admit. It's peaceful knowing that you are still safe and sound in your apartment while almost all of your neighbors are stuck somewhere south on the autoroute in a horrific traffic jam. You could get rather smug about it, but you know that soon it will be your turn—soon you too will be battling overstuffed freeway on-ramps or fighting through the crowds at the train station. Despite the bother, you are kind of looking forward to it. Despite the illogic of everyone going on vacation at the same time, and the knowledge that there will be crowds in every sunny spot on the continent, and the firm conviction that we would all be better off if more people traveled off season, you don't like feeling left out of the party. You too want to be able to flaunt your tan in September at the rentrée (literally, re-entry), when everyone will be swapping vacation stories and moaning about going back to work. You too want to be part of the smiling hoard of vacationers invading normally tranquil places and wondering why there is so much noise. You too want to roast, at least for a little while, in the sun after endless months of clouds and rain.

I used to be convinced that my husband's desperate need to go to the family holiday cottage every year at the same time (August) was based on some deep-rooted insecurity or ancient childhood trauma. The idea of voluntarily spending time with one's parents and relatives over vacation seemed highly suspicious to me, particularly when it meant three weeks in an isolated house in the middle of the woods. That was before I had been seduced by the pure air, the relative calm, and the abundant supply of fabulous foodstuffs available in that particular corner of the southwest. For better or worse, I've adapted. This year, to make sure that I get my share of noise, pollution, and madness, I've tacked on a week in New York at the end of my trip. As any ex-New Yorker knows, ya gotta tank up every once in a while.

So this is a long way of saying that I've succumbed—you probably won't be hearing from me until September. Bonnes vacances—on se verra à la rentrée!