I know it does seem like I take rather a lot of holidays. (And this is why).
Snow is beautiful, but let’s be honest, so is the sand. My friend and her children rented a place for the winter holidays at one of the most perfect (and relatively undiscovered) beaches in the world. Yes, I say world. I can talk big, because it is just that lovely.
The place was right on the beach with whales passing by (!), and its own lawn and BBQ, and little tracks through the trees for the children to explore, which ultimately led down to the beach. A beach with a very treacherous sea, so there was some ’slow parenting’ but also some neurotic parenting too.
My friend and I go way back, we were first holidaying in our twenties, with various boyfriends and not a child in sight. This is the second holiday my friend and I have taken together with our children and happily, we holiday very compatibly together*. Because we were sans partners the holiday reminded me a little of when I was a child and my mother, by then a single parent, used to holiday with other single mother friends and their children. There is a different atmosphere when there are no partners about, somehow the parenting and the workload becomes more collective, the family units are dissolved a little. And with all that feminist collectivism going on you get a little romantic in your thinking and you start wondering if tribal parenting could be where its at. Then you get in your car, withdraw your money from the ATM, and go buy yourself a lovely little short black coffee.
That night over a glass of wine I made a very profound observation (ok, not that profound, it was over a glass of wine after all), that all women need to remind themselves from time to time that they can do it alone, that if things got really bad, if they really needed to, they could leave that man and go out on their own. Life might be hard, but it would also be ok. When you’ve got children you can find it very difficult to remind yourself of that courage, unless you’re drinking wine and having a wonderful night with your woman friend.
I also spent a bit of the holiday rambling on about my fascination with ’slow parenting’ and here are three little beachcombers filling my heart with the warm glow of ’slow parenting’ in action. And on the left with the long, blonde, sea-knotted hair is my own little beachcomber.
* Holidaying with friends doesn’t always work does it? My partner and I once camped on a small island in a coral cay on the Barrier Reef with another close friend and her then boyfriend. The boat which dropped us out there for the week (nb. with the exclusion of the campers, who have to reserve a permit a year in advance, the island is deserted) warned us that the sea was likely to be too rough for them to come out and get us at the end of the week. They asked us if we wanted to take the opportunity now to fill up any spare containers with water from the boat’s supply before they left (nb. the island had no water sources and no means of outside contact). So I wanted to empty out our esky and fill it with life-preserving water. But oh no, not our friends. They wanted to keep their beers cold just a little longer. Argh. Such was their cloudy thinking and utter debauchery at the time they spent their entire time on the island scoffing drugs, sunbaking naked (and using up our precious reserves of sunscreen), and stealing food from our tent. We were not friends by the end of the trip.
By the time the boat finally rescued us we’d all run out of food and my partner had resorted to catching fish for us to eat. The same beautiful fish we were snorkelling with each day. We were heart-broken, but hungry vegetarians. Our by then ex friends had lost their fishing kit in a big wave of the ocean’s karmic justice and frankly, I’d have let them starve to death. Fortunately other campers, less effected by the Lord of the Flies vibe, shared their catch with our ex friends. It took an entire year for us to speak to each other again. We’re now very close again.
