Now enter vacation.
Let me preface this by saying I hadn’t taken more than a three or four day break from work since August 2017. Yes, I got laid off eight months ago, but that actually meant I had to start finding gigs, which is a job in and of itself, and working even more hours (freelancing does not pay very well) to sustain myself.
So back to present day. On Sunday, after a late night with an old drinking buddy from college, I made my way to the Atlantic coast to meet my friend Kerri and her family (three of her four kids, her daughter’s boyfriend, one of her son’s friends, and the family dog, Olive—another sweetie that won my heart). A week at Duck, in Outer Banks, never sounded so good. Air conditioning, electricity, a kitchen. Hell, a roof. Not to mention, as I’d learn, such a wonderful group of people.
When I arrived, everyone was already making the beach home their home and cooking a dinner of sausage dogs and baked beans, inviting me to sit out on the deck for dinner. They made dinner and ate together every night, something that seemed so foreign to me. I wanted to offer to cook, but everything I thought of was a one-person dish. I realized I don’t know the first thing about how to cook for a group of people. This, and just being among them, really got me thinking about families, the idea of family, the idea of companionship. I’ve been so fiercely steering this ship as my own captain, I’d forgotten that it’s pretty nice to be in the company of other people—to laugh together, eat together, drink together. It was oddly … nice.
Part of my backstory that is relevant here is the fact that for more than a decade, I’ve not been much of a drinker. Once or twice a year—Christmas, maybe, or when a friend visits from out of town or some douchebag breaks my heart (just kidding; I don’t date douchebags)—I throw back a few. Truthfully, it’s quite often more than a few when it happens. And something about this sea-salt air, combined with a family who likes to throw back a whole lot, put me in the uncharacteristic spirit to start drinking. Every day. It was like my own personal chapter of Rum Diaries, except mine entailed gin and scotch. And, curiously, the drinking didn’t seem to faze me (except for the night I puked in the ocean).
Kerri rose before all of us each morning, busying herself with cleaning the kitchen, making breakfast, taking a run along the beach, followed by yoga on the porch. Come afternoon, she was seldom without a glass of wine in hand. And by 7, she was usually done for the night. Nighttime Kerri retires by 8 or 9, leaving me, who typically stays up until 12 or 1, to either do things like write postcards or hang out with all the kids wandering around the beach house drinking and playing beer pong and rapping along to top 40.
I felt a little out of place (what else is new) but chose the latter. This led to mostly hanging out with her son Seth and his friend Will, the two who always seemed to stay up the latest—and were always up for just about anything. Most of that entailed drinking and wandering onto the beach each night, just taking in the moon and the tides and vastness of it all. And Will’s penchant for catching sand crabs and identifying their gender. We often went to bed at an ungodly hour (ungodly for me, anyway)—2, 3, 4, after 4. As Will put it, “We are definitely the rockstars of this vacation.” (The rockstars were passed out on couches at 9 a.m. Sunday morning, when everyone else had cleaned, packed, and hit the road for the long drive home.)
All of this is to say that I felt lucky to spend some real, actual, legitimate downtime with Kerri (she’s sincerely one of my favorite people, hands down), but I was also pleasantly surprised to make some new friends.
I’ve always needed a lot of time alone, which has grown over the years, maybe to a point of severity that I hunt realized, a ship blown too far offshore from a strong gust of wind. I’ve lived alone, vacationed alone, gone to movies and restaurants alone for most of my adult life, mostly by preference. But in this short week (too short), I’ve enjoyed other people’s company again in a way that I hadn’t for a long time, maybe since high school. Maybe it’s something about the genuine closeness and spirit of this family and the way they made me feel, if only for a week, that I was one of them. But it’s had me missing them already and suddenly not as gung ho as I had been about journeying across America solo.
“Vacations change things,” Kerri said. “Don’t they?”
They do.
It’s as if we get a moment out of time to reflect and exhale and be exactly who we’ve wanted to be but were too caught up in the minutiae to totally surrender to it. Vacations put our lives into perspective like anything that gives us another vantage point to consider ... or maybe a few.