I always go into vacation a little flustered.
The packing anxiety. The mental checklist that never fully empties. The quiet worry that I’ve forgotten something important enough to matter. When someone asks “what do you want to get accomplished tomorrow?” on vacation, my internal answer is always the same: survive. That’s it. That’s the whole plan. I don’t want to DO. I want to lose track of what day it is — which I have successfully managed this week. I want to sit in the sun until I forget what I was worried about.
The Finger Lakes will do that to you if you let it.
We were two hours into the drive here, doing the thing parents do on long car rides — calling out cows, horses, silos, anything to break up the duration for a toddler strapped into a car seat. Which works beautifully until it doesn’t, because 9 times out of 10 they miss the thing you pointed out and you’ve just personally ignited a full inner mosh pit of toddler FOMO that only you can extinguish. The cows. The horses. The really cool silo. The train they definitely didn’t see because you got excited and said it out loud and now you’re spending the rest of the drive apologizing for a moment you created entirely from your own enthusiasm.
So when I saw the train this time, I turned to Nick and in the lowest, loudest whisper voice I have ever produced said: “BAAAABE. Did you see that train?!”
He did. Evelyn didn’t. Meltdown avoided. Excitement contained. Self-awareness: one point.
That’s the learning curve nobody puts in the parenting books. You figure out — slowly, expensively, through a hundred backfired moments — how to hold your own excitement differently. Not lose it. Just time it better.
Sitting quietly in the car after that, everyone else absorbed in their own worlds, I noticed something. In those moments when Evelyn is quiet and occupied and the noise finally stops — sometimes it would just be nice for someone to take interest in me. Not because they’re obligated. Just because they thought to. I can sit with quiet. Most of my time is so loud that silence is honestly a gift. But every once in a while I’d like someone to wonder what’s going on in my head.
The funny thing is, when Nick does ask, my brain goes completely blank. Which could mean I’m finally calm. Could mean I’m overwhelmed and can’t sort a single thought from the pile. Or it could be perimenopause, which has a lot to answer for at this point!
That blank though got me thinking — what else have I been stifling? Not just excitement about trains. What have I started containing to prevent arguments, to keep someone else’s insecurities from surfacing, to manage the moment before it becomes one? Not as a mom. Not as a wife. Just as a person. The one who gets excited about trains and occasionally just wants someone to ask.
Last summer a friend asked why I wear biker shorts under my dresses. I felt weird about it for a second. And then I thought — wait. Why aren’t YOU wearing biker shorts under your dresses? Because here’s the actual list: I feel better supported. I hate when my thighs touch in summer heat. And I have a toddler who, when nervous or overwhelmed, defaults to lifting my dress, pulling at my waistband, or hiding directly inside my clothing as a survival strategy. Biker shorts aren’t a quirk. They’re infrastructure.
The question wasn’t strange. My answer just didn’t need an apology.
I’ve been thinking about how many things I’ve been quietly apologizing for lately. How many things I’ve swallowed. Evelyn is sometimes getting the version that contains — the one that’s so far inside her own head planning what’s next that she forgets the current moment doesn’t always require management.
I don’t want to be that version anymore than she needs to receive it.
Emily wasn’t here at the beginning of this trip. She was off having her own big kid experience in Tennessee, which is exactly the kind of thing she should be doing. But I missed her. Her laugh specifically — the way she can be silly in a way that makes the whole room lighter without trying.
When I saw her smile and heard her giggle this morning, my heart jumped.
Emily was supposed to be my last. She was the daughter I thought would close that chapter — until I met Nick and we made Evelyn. So she holds a particular place, that girl. She was the end of a story that turned out to have more pages.
We ended up on a paddle board together this afternoon. Just the two of us, floating head to head on our backs, talking. I told her I was proud of her. She asked me why. So I told her — that she’s going into her senior year having worked so hard, that she’s grown into such a beautiful person, that I’m proud to be her mom.
And then she told me I was beautiful. That she was raised by the right people.
She gave it back to me doubled and I didn’t even see it coming.
In that moment I was happy — but it’s not until I’m writing this that I’m actually feeling it. I have that image in my head of my girl and I, just the two of us, no one else. That moment isn’t meant to be shared. That’s the thing I’ve always told her.
Some moments are meant only for you. Like driving down a road and seeing something so extraordinary that you pass it before anyone else can look up — and that’s okay. That moment was meant for you. You were the one who was supposed to see it. I told her that a long time ago when I explained why I love candid photography. I don’t like posing. I don’t like staging. The moments that matter most are the ones caught when nobody’s looking. The real ones. The ones you’re blessed to have seen when no one else did.
She remembered.
I’ve been writing here for almost a year about invisible work and grief and the weight of showing up for everyone all at once. About the version of myself that contains. About wondering if any of it lands.
A paddle board in the Finger Lakes just answered that question.
The best way I can describe what happened with Emily is this: there are moments in life that you may not remember in full, but you can see the image and feel what it was. Writing this, I miss my mother. Not in a sad way — that’s always there. In the way that the experiences I had with her left an indelible mark on my soul that I carry everywhere.
We went on road trips almost every summer when I was a teenager. I can remember listening to music with the windows down, waking to the sunrise in another state, the humidity in the air and the warmth of sunburned skin. I don’t remember every detail. But I can feel it.
She left that in me. I hope that when she left this world, she carried the same kind of images — those flashes, like photographs, from moments we shared as I moved from teenage girl into a mother with girls of my own. I hope she felt them the way I feel them now.
And I am only hoping I am leaving that mark for my girls.
Emily, if you’re reading this — in those moments you take the time to share with me, I feel the love I thought I had lost when my mom left this world. I heal a little more every time. And I feel her with us both.
I’m going to take a nap now. Burn the other side when I wake up. Start back at the gym next week. Feel guilty about neither.
The plan for tomorrow is survive. And I mean that in the very best way.
What’s something vacation has revealed to you that the regular pace of life kept hidden? Drop it below. I’m in a particularly good mood for this conversation. 🖤
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