The Modern Holiday

How 'I just have to deal with this' culture has destroyed the vacay.

‘Hang on just one min, I’ve just got to send this invite to my accountant.’

‘Oaaakay, but you made the kayaking booking for 11.00 and it’s already 10.47. Just saying,’ says husband.

‘Don’t worry, it’s only going to take me like, 60 seconds.’

<60 seconds later> 

‘Fffffffsake, it’s asking for a two-step authentication and a five-digit code which I can only get by text, and I’ve got no 4G in this godforsaken reception desert.’ Resend code, resend code. ‘Why the f did we choose this place?’

‘Because your parents live here and it’s free.’

‘Right. Yeah. Ok, you get the kids in the car, and I’ll be there.’

8 minutes later children shod and buckled in car, husband has a Teams call so evaporates. His description of his holiday workload as ‘dipping in and out’ is looking ever more disingenuous. I receive another email from accountant saying the invite has not been authenticated. At this moment, three-year-old begins screaming at glass-shattering pitch that he doesn’t want to go to the beach. Jump in car and as we drive past the highest point in area, 73 text messages each with 5-digit authentication codes come through via SMS. Try to use the last one; it has expired. Ideal.

Arrive at kayaking 20 minutes late. Youngest child dispatched with grandma as ‘hates everything.’ No one at the kayak office seems capable of either eye contact nor confirming reservation in English, French or one for luck, German.

An hour and a half later fear I may have dislocated shoulder via oars. Resort to using a tube of tinted primer on eldest’s back-of-neck as husband forgot to add SPF to the essentials bag. He’s probably slathering it on while having a quiet lunch with a side of tanning after his back-to-back calls in the wifi wilderness. That was mean. I am mean.

Land back on terra firma after developing a black eye delivered via my son’s forehead mid-disembark off green plastic kayak. As I gingerly poke it, feel the swelling building below my skin. Phone buzzes. Accountant really needs code. Manage to hotspot my laptop in the boot of the car and request code for the 74th time. It’s refused because I’m abroad and an automatic phone call rattles the side of the X-trail trunk. After 11 minutes negotiating in broken English (both ends of the phone by this point), manage to get new code sent through and voila, yippee, halle-fucking-lujah send via email! I’m free! See! Working from a foreign land is so effortless.

It’s now well past high noon and sweat trickles down every vertical plane of my body. Coincidently realise I’m struggling to turn my neck to the left, probably something to do with slipping in that pool of water left for me as ghoulish gift at the bottom of the stairs by my children yesterday. The hour’s oaring was clearly not a great idea, but I’d promised. While walking up 112 medieval steps into town all sans bannister, try to do 5 rounds of 8-second-deep breathwork to placate my jittery nervous system…while simultaneously batting off intrusive thoughts about my son slipping headfirst from the top. The oxygen deprivation seems merely to make me dizzy. Am I concussed? Really not sure how one can tell these days.

Meet the grandparents, who THANK GOD ordered a safety burger for eldest son as informed upon arrival that kitchen out of food at 1.36pm. I settle for a citron Madeleine that someone has sat on. Squished to 2mm and washed cloyingly down with a glass of rosé. THANK GOD they never run out of that.

‘I’ve been absolutely swamped,’ husband sighs as I walk through the door carrying youngest son who is comatose even though he’s starting school in a fortnight under strict instructions that there will be NO DAYTIME naps. Feel stab of anxiety a) about not having mastered his all-day consciousness as planned b) also not having eradicated the nighttime nappies, also meant to have achieved by Sept 1, shortly followed by c) a cascade of self-reproach about all the reading, writing and maths practice along with all the educational yet memorable plans I was meant to tick off over the past six weeks. One out of 18 summers! Wasted trying to get a two-step authentication code.

‘Swamped,’ I say. ‘Swamped?! I was literally nutted in the face in a swamp a couple of hours ago.’ Might this be the shortest marriage in recent memory?

Apparently, he’ll be on calls until 7.45pm when I’ll then have some ‘me time.’ Conveniently after the children have been fed, bathed and stroked/lullabied into submission. Mum looks at me with that ‘plus ça change’ look and I remember that I am meant to be supportive of my husband’s start-up dedication and plan to financially support our family in a way that has eluded me. Remind myself that I aim to be gentle with all my relationships, not just my parenting. Wind my neck in. Well as far as it can be wound considering there’s still no left-hand mobility.

Remember I’ve still got my Substack to write and feel stomach curdle like the inside of a pastel de nata. Damn the screentime, let’s all go and sit in our pants and watch the Sonic movie. Youngest snuggles into me bare chested. I’m wearing a deep vest top and I feel his skin warming mine. His arms are so smooth, his complexion so flawless. I twirl his little curls around my pinkie finger, filing the sensation into my bank of sentimentality. I could cry over every tender moment knowing how the blade of nostalgia will soon make carpaccio of my heart. Curate snack plates of pretzels and dried fruit, lying to myself that there must be some kind of positive nutritional content in desiccated apple rings.

The other three adults are all in the office, each tapping away on their laptops. Four grown-ups, three businesses, not a boss amongst us. Freedom in lots of ways, slavery in others. Remind myself how much better this trip has been than years before when I’ve had to write thousands of words into the small hours after bedtime. Feel gratitude for clearing my literary schedule this August; simultaneously feel concerned about the financial impact that choice will have on my YoY results. Will it hit my mortgage prospects? In 2027 or whenever we’re getting this fantasy castle in the sky? 

Jesus, it’s nearly dinner time. ‘What shall I make them?’ Mum asks, the angel that she is. How did she do this on her own? ‘It wasn’t anything like this Katherine. It was harder in some ways, but it wasn’t like this.’

Look at my phone. There’s a message from someone criticising a parenting choice I’d made yesterday. Considering I don’t post my kids online anymore, it’s almost unbelievable that anyone could find an angle. But there it is sitting like a turd in my DMs. Remind myself that no one else on this planet has parented my two particular children. That I’m sat on the sofa stroking small bare backs with a salad plate sized black bruise on my ass and a tea shaded swelling on my cheekbone. That we built our businesses to give our children a more secure and comfortable life than we had growing up. That every day I subjugate my feelings and take the literal and emotional punches on the chin from two spirited and unfeasibly athletic boys with strong minds and short attention spans.

‘There are children and there are children,’ says a kindly woman to me at the airport. ‘I can see you have the latter, how are you keeping so calm? You’re doing so well.’ Remind myself that I am doing well in the context of the tightrope I’m tiptoeing. That’s not an opinion, it’s a fact.

I’m remorseful that sometimes my work cuts special moments off at the ankles. That is just shit for us all. And I say all because while Sonic and Shadow have been hypnotising my progeny, I’ve been secretly WhatsApping (behind a cushion as I’m trying to reduce the amount of time my children see me on the blower) my girlfriend who is sitting at a makeshift desk 500 miles away on the Costa Brava. As a salaried employee, I’d imagined she was living the rosé lunch dream, burning her shoulders with the kids at mini golf before Sangria nights out on the Spanish tiles. But apparently, she too has been working every day and had 9pm calls put into her diary by her boss. ‘It’s all so disappointing,’ she understates.

It’s not just me. It’s not just my choices or my failures as a parent or human. The world has spun in a direction which wasn’t quite what we typed into the SatNav. Digital nomads, working from the beach, flexible working quotas, set up your kitchen table business mama, then take it all on tour! For all its attractions, fibre optic has tethered us if not geographically then psychologically and temporarily tighter to the office. Holidays mean something different now.

The kids are down, I’ve laced my sneakers tight and I’m off along a countryside trail, half an hour before the sun starts to plumb in the sky. The plan is to pound the adrenaline out through my soles. To purge myself of cortisol and memories of tonight’s bath time meltdown over coconut flavoured toothpaste. I start to write my Substack, braiding words into sentences, unable to ever ever single-task. Is this malaise curable? Are my neural pathways too well established? BE PRESENT I discipline myself.

Turning the corner, a large dog runs at pace towards me, barking fiercely. I like dogs well enough, but will admit to being wary of the wild country variety. It seems quite feasible that he’s not going to stop. I envision him tearing at my neck. Flashes of stories I’ve read on XL Bullys go through my mind; I think of my friend here in France who recently lost her own beloved dog in a fight with an unmuzzled and violent local canine. Might this be the same dog? I stand my ground and signal for the dog to stop, as if he were simply deaf and not you know, an animal. With about a metre between us, his owner calls him off and he screeches to a halt.

I continue running, hardly missing a stride because I’m totally inured to fear. There is a sensorial deadening when you run full time on your nerves, which means you stop reacting to things that scare you. That’s scary, isn’t it? Maybe I should talk to someone about that. When I get to the top of the hill, I notice a dull ache in my left knee. Running at 40 isn’t the same as running before it. I consider the wear and tear on my body at the mid-point of its use. Halfway to my own sell-by-date. How much water has passed under the bridge, how lucky I am to still be here breathing in this peach-tinted humidity with my family ensconced just over the horizon. I might have to walk the rest of the way.

Back at mum’s, I check on the children, both now asleep and beatific. Tomorrow is a new day. It may not be easier, but it will be fresh and shiny new. There’s no point worrying about how hard I still find it all. Onwards, only, always.