The Mirage of Arrival

The sweat is pooling in the small of my back, and the Parthenon is looking less like a cradle of Western democracy and more like a very expensive pile of rocks that offers zero shade. Move your thumb, Leo, I am hissing through teeth that haven’t been properly brushed in 23 hours. My 13-year-old daughter, Maya, is currently trying to take a selfie that makes it look like she is alone in a desolate wasteland of aesthetic cool, while my 3-year-old son, Leo, is attempting to eat a pebble he found near a 2503-year-old column. This is the dream. This is the brochure. This is the peak of our collective existence, or so the 53 tabs I had open on my laptop last night would have me believe.

I feel remarkably like I did last Tuesday when I accidentally joined a high-stakes video call with my camera on. I was in my oldest, most stained t-shirt, mid-yawn, scratching a part of my anatomy that should never be seen by a regional director. We spend $6003 to fly across an ocean so we can perform the role of a ‘Happy Family’ in front of world-famous landmarks, only to find that we brought the same resentments and the same sticky fingers with us. We are just the same people, but with worse Wi-Fi and more expensive snacks.

The Hazard is the Expectation

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If you can’t see the hazards, you’re the hazard.

Ethan B.-L., Driving Instructor

My old driving instructor, Ethan B.-L., used to tell me that the most dangerous part of any journey is the moment you think you’ve arrived. He was a man who wore clip-on sunglasses and smelled vaguely of menthol and disappointment. On a family vacation, the hazard is the expectation. We project our hopes for family cohesion onto a single, high-pressure event, forgetting that real connection happens in the 3-minute intervals between the chaos, not the grand, orchestrated photo-ops. Ethan B.-L. once failed me on a practice test because I didn’t check my blind spot while pulling away from a curb. He could have been talking about a toddler having a meltdown in the middle of the Louvre.

There is a specific kind of exhaustion that only a parent on vacation knows. You are not on vacation; you are simply managing a mobile crisis unit in a more scenic location. Yesterday, I spent 43 minutes explaining to Leo why he couldn’t take the ‘special rock’ (a piece of ancient limestone) back to the hotel. Meanwhile, Maya was oscillating between stony silence and sharp-tongued critiques of the local culture, which she deemed ‘inauthentic’ because she saw a Starbucks near the Roman Forum. I found myself looking at a statue of a headless goddess and feeling a deep, spiritual kinship with her.

The Friction of Unlikely Coexistence

We are sold a marketing fantasy that says if we just find the right resort… the friction of our lives will suddenly vanish. But friction is the nature of family. It’s the rubbing together of different developmental stages, different sleep requirements, and different levels of interest in 14th-century pottery. To expect a teenager and a preschooler to find common ground in a museum is like expecting a shark and a squirrel to share a hobby.

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Most accidents happen within 3 kilometers of home. That’s when we stop paying attention.

Ethan B.-L., Reflecting on Autopilot

We are so focused on the hazards that we forget to enjoy the road. The ‘magic’ we are looking for isn’t in the $333 dinner where everyone ended up crying over a spilled soda. It’s in the quiet 3:03 AM moment when everyone is finally asleep, and the hotel room is still, and you realize you all survived another day without losing anyone in a foreign subway system.

Stripping Away the Artifice: The Trail Solution

It’s why I’ve started to think that the best vacations are the ones that strip away the artifice. This is why I found myself looking into walking tours. There is something about the rhythm of putting one foot in front of the other that kills the desire to argue. When we looked into the pilgrimage trail Kumano Kodo, I realized that for families with older children, this focus is a blessing.

Working With Gravity, Not Against It

Ethan B.-L. once made me park the car on a steep hill and just sit there. “Feel the gravity?” he asked. “Good,” he said. “Don’t fight it. Work with it. If you fight the gravity, you’ll burn out your brakes.” That’s the secret, isn’t it? Working with the gravity of our children’s personalities instead of fighting them. If the toddler wants to inspect every single ant on the sidewalk, let him. The brakes on our collective sanity are too precious to burn out on a Tuesday in Tuscany.

The Inventory of 3 Real Moments

Those moments weren’t in the brochure. They didn’t cost $103 in entry fees. They were just… there. Real connection isn’t a destination we reach after 13 hours of flying. It’s the way we handle the hazards Ethan B.-L. warned me about.

The Evidence of Failed Expectations

I think about the 63 photos I’ve taken today. Most of them are blurry. In 23 of them, someone is making a face that could peel paint. But in 3 of them, just 3, there is a look of genuine, unforced peace. I’ll keep those. I’ll delete the rest. Life is too short to carry around the evidence of our failed expectations.

We are moving forward, one step at a time, checking our mirrors, watching our blind spots, and trying not to eat the ancient rocks. It’s not a perfect journey, but as Ethan would say, as long as you’re still moving, you haven’t crashed yet.