Spending over forty hours packed into a car with four teenagers without air conditioning is perhaps not a recipe for a great family holiday. We certainly covered Europe from Switzerland, to Barcelona, to Paris and London. We have some brilliant photos, we were bowled over by the staggering beauty of Switzerland, we enjoyed silly things like meeting ‘Princess’ a disobedient bulldog at the bottom of the Eiffel Tower and decided that Barcelona is over rated. We got to watch the world cup final in a Swiss bar, realise why Toblerone is the shape it is, compare three different tube networks and conclude London has the best. One highlight was the family watching the first two seasons of Homeland squashed together in front of lap top which surely we could have done more comfortably at home! How does this all sound to you? The truth is we also had moments when we wished we were somewhere else and not with each other.
Our holidays generally are a mixture of the good, the bad, and the ugly. The bad has come in various forms from tyres needing changing (hassle), our car breaking down completely and having to leave it behind in France, clearing a blocked drain and sewage spill, wallets stolen, vomiting and no access to a washing machine, children bitten to pieces with severe allergic reactions and the biggest outbreak of head lice my children have ever had. The ugly we bring with us. We are strong personalities who all want different often-conflicting things and dislike backing down. So some of our idyllic looking photos have members of the family not present in them because someone is off stage left sulking. Some pictures we look back on and instead of being reminded of fun we remember the argument that happened previously or a moment later. When I think about it our holidays have provided us with a stack of memories with quite a few involving an extremely ill tempered moment by one of the family and I’m not just blaming the teenagers.
This summer has provided us with lots of ‘moments’ stemming from: watching too much football, watching too little football, playing too long on the PS4, not enough time on the PS4, playing music too loudly, wearing earphones but disturbing everyone else with a piercing tinny sound, not being able to sit in the front/middle of the car, opening windows/not opening windows in the car, being stuck in the back of the car, being too hot/too cold, not having enough coke, I could go on. Generally our ‘moments’ come from the banal and mundane but they are the things that really challenge us.
I confess that as a parent I get stuck especially when faced with cries from one that is in direct contrast to the demands of another. I am asked to dispense justice and fail frequently. I try the ‘lets consider the needs of others before our own’ approach but with teenagers now 14, 16, 18, and 19 this is a suggestion that they can chose to follow or not and often chose not to. Ultimately I only have control over my responses and pray for patience.
We can put so much store on our holidays when studies show that for a large number of people they are a time of great stress. They can provide opportunity for refreshment and new experiences but we are still the same people as we always are except we may be more demanding than normal because ‘this is MY holiday after all’. Our family life constantly challenges us to work at selflessness and holidays throw us together in a more confined space than normal thus creating even more challenge. Although I love holidays with my family in all their mad chaos through the highs and lows and will persist with them because we need this time together – it teaches us to love each other better despite everything.
Why am I writing this blog? Because I don’t think we are alone in having ‘moments’. I liked it when my friends told me recently the story of their toddler throwing a bowl across a room because that feels real. Family life is not idyllic but sometimes when we look from the outside in we think that it is and that others have it all sown up. I know looking from the inside out that we certainly haven’t. All family life is a wild roller-coaster ride and you can never be sure what is coming next. Prayer is vital and the book of Proverbs really helpful - I must read it some more.
I hope you had a great summer despite everything!
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