Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 3, 1994 TAG: 9401040007
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Joe Kennedy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
We'd been hearing for years that parents ought to do those things, but we hesitated for a lot of reasons: We both work, and feel we don't have enough time with our kids as it is; our kids love to travel, so whenever go someplace, we like to take them with us; and we felt guilty even thinking about spending precious time and money away from our principal responsibilities in this life.
These excuses made sense to us. But our friends on the soccer sidelines and in the stands at baseball and basketball games all said ``Go for it,'' so, finally, we did.
Of course, they were right.
Before I go into details about our one trip, here are some getaway traditions from people I know. The first couple has three children between the ages of 10 and 16. Both parents work, and they have the usual overload of outside activities, as well. But every fall, they park their children with the grandparents and head to the University of Richmond, her alma mater, for a football game.
They take rural roads and stop at antique shops and country stores. They pass through small towns on a Friday afternoon, when everyone, young and old, is getting ready for the high school game that night. In Richmond, they check into a hotel, go out to dinner and maybe see a few friends.
Anything else, like romance?
``Of course,'' the husband says. ``What do you think?''
The next day they go to the game and come home. They are so refreshed, you would think they'd been gone for a month.
They consider their Weekend Getaways as vital to their marriage as the paychecks that come in each month. It removes them, briefly, from the endless activities of family life, and, more important, it brings them together on the relaxed terms that began to disappear once the family started to grow.
Such trips don't have to be fancy, says another guy I know, who has gone on breaks with his wife to Lexington and Abingdon: ``I just need a bed and a room.''
What he means is that the time alone enables him and his wife to concentrate on ``the important, not the urgent.'' They talk about saving for their three children's educations, instead of wondering how they'll ever get through the next week. They take in a movie or a play, as they are rarely able to do at home.
``I like not having to fix dinner,'' his wife says. ``I like having an uninterrupted meal, without someone spilling juice or pulling on my pants leg.''
It's little things like those, as well as the change of scenery, that seem to make these trips work.
Of course, they won't work if the children are staying with unreliable sitters. That's why grandparents so often are called upon. And they won't work if the parents are plagued by guilt. One way to prevent that is to plan the occasion weeks in advance and talk about it often, so the kids will know it's coming. The kids themselves seem not to mind. Sure, it costs a bit, but what is money for?
``The important thing is just the break,'' a friend of mine says. ``I travel a lot, but it's real important for my wife to get away, and I've felt like I was really doing something for her, getting her away for a few meals and things like that.''
``It gives you a different identity,'' says the woman who has been to Lexington and Abingdon. ``When you're with the kids, you're Mom all the time. It seems like 90 percent of what I do is to meet their needs. When I'm away from them, I can give a little more thought to our marriage, to the two of us or to myself. I sometimes don't even have time to think, some times are so terribly busy. We get in touch with the people we were before we had kids.''
Her husband has so enjoyed the childless interludes that he has considered sending the children to their grandparents for a weekend while he and his wife stay home.
But, he says, ``it's different when the kids are away and you get halfway into a ballgame and your wife walks in. You think, `I should mow the grass.' It's good to be away from the house, as well.''
I know another couple who went to a beach resort without their children, only to have the husband spend three days in bed, sick. It was still worth it, his wife says. She spent all her time on the beach.
Hardy pioneers that we are, we spent our first getaway at an inn in Floyd County, less than 30 miles from Roanoke. It was lovely and quiet, but I wasn't sure the money was well spent until dinner time, when I noticed myself regaling my wife with exaggerated tales of my misspent youth, the way I did when we were dating. Strange beyond words, but enjoyable, too.
Our kids didn't miss us: Grandma has cable.
The effects of these brief trips seem almost too good, and too easily attained, to be true. But the easiest thing is not to do it.
That, says a guy I know, could be a big mistake. He recalls reading about husbands and wives who feverishly raised their children and then, when the last one had gone and the house was empty, turned to each other and said, ``Who are you?''
``I'd like to avoid that, if possible,'' he says. One way is the getaway.
by CNB