It's giving Queen of Christmas

Struggling with the post-vacation blues

I pity any driver who happened to get stuck in front of me on my aggressive 20-minute drive to a recovery meeting this week. "Why are they driving so slow?" the impatient voice inside my head screamed. "Don't they know who I am?" 

By the end of the work day on Wednesday, that voice that lives inside my head was giving Mariah Carey trying to be the Queen of Christmas.
 
I told another woman in recovery about it as we were shivering outside in a dark parking lot after another meeting on Friday night. I explained how I’d been so out of sorts at the beginning of the week, which didn’t make sense since I had just gotten back from a tropical vacation. “That’s probably why you were so cranky,” she said and a big cartoon lightbulb went off over my head.
 
I flew home late last Saturday night after a relaxing week in Aruba with my two 20-something daughters, and while we didn’t have the best weather, we still managed to have a great time together. Combined, I think the three of us read (or listened to) about nine books. We went to a lot of yummy dinners, played endless rounds of Rummikub (which we brought in a Ziploc bag), and snorkeled alongside each other in the warm tropical ocean.
 
As with any planned family gathering, I knew the trip could have gone a few ways depending on the energy we all packed in our suitcases. We could have ended up feeling resentful toward each other for perceived slights and radiated bitchy vibes off our lounge chairs.
 
Instead, I would chalk the success of the trip (for me) up to the lack of expectations I crammed in my carry-on along with all my Target beach coverups and bathing suits. We also deployed good communication skills beforehand, so that everyone was on the same page about planned activities and money. Also, I didn’t force anyone to do anything they didn’t want to do. When the ants in my pants told me after a day or two of sitting around that I needed to go for a long walk, I didn’t make a big deal when the girls demurred. I put on my big Beats headphones and walked down the beach at sunset listening to an audiobook and watching the colors of the setting sun streak across the sky.
 
And to their credit, the girls kept it together when I did things like asking if my younger daughter could help me update the backgrounds on the multiple devices I’d brought on the trip to look cool like hers. Oh, could she also help make my Apple Watch bigger so I can read texts? “You’re like my very own IT specialist,” I said to her tight smile as she handed my updated iPad back to me.
 
And my other daughter didn’t let her annoyance over my inability to comprehend gluten and what food products it lived in that she was trying not to eat, escalate into anything more than just mild irritation. “I’m gluten dyslexic,” I tried to tell her after offering her a croissant one morning for breakfast.
 
And the girls are still navigating life with a sober mother as much as I’m trying to figure out what it means to be on vacation without alcohol. To that end, maybe they had one glass of wine when we played Rummikub after a day of sitting on the beach or a fancy cocktail with dinner. I drank many bottles of Pellegrino with our meals and had one fancy mocktail that tasted like pineapples and came decorated with banana leaves.
 
Midweek, we climbed onto a catamaran with a bunch of other vacationers for a “champagne brunch” snorkel adventure. The girls and I pulled masks out of a watery bucket to strap on our faces and sat on a ladder dangling off the end of the boat before pushing off into the water to explore. One spot found us paddling over a sunken German tanker that had been on the ocean floor since WWII. It was super eerie to glide over the broken hull and see the towering mast jutting far off into the distance, striped and colorful fish darting in and out of the ocean fauna that had attached to the shipwreck over time.
 
At another stop, my older daughter popped her head out of the water to motion me over and then pointed down and I heard her say, “Turtle,” through her snorkel. And there in front of us, was a sea turtle floating through the water as if we had stumbled into a scene from Finding Nemo (in which I would definitely be playing Dory). Later, she’d point out another one nibbling on a big rock far below, its spotted head moving up and down to feed on whatever was growing down there like me trying to stop eating a bag of Swiss Miss flavored Boom Chicka Pop (spoiler alert: impossible).
 
After an earlier snorkel stop, the girls and I sat on towels on the catamaran’s netting, drying off in our bathing suits, red indentations pressed into our foreheads and cheeks from the masks we’d strapped way too tight to our faces. We’d staked out enough room that I could stretch my legs out in front of me and feel the salt of the ocean drying out in the sun. I tipped my head back and the sun warmed my face and opened my eyes to see my girls doing the same.
 
And then, in a blink, we were back home in cold New Jersey. The girls stayed on for another day or two before eventually returning to their lives in Philly and North Carolina and once again, it was just me and my dog. And what I want to say is that there are parts of being at this empty nest stage of my life that I love. I told the checkout lady at Wegmans when I ran in during lunchtime to buy some bagged salads, that it was so luxurious not to have to make dinner. Every. Single. Night. In fact that night, I didn’t even eat the salad but devoured that addictive bag of popcorn instead as I watched an episode of The Crown.
 
But I also miss my kids. It’s like the reverse of that old parenting book my therapist told me about years ago when my teenagers were making me crazy, “Get Out of My Life, But First  Could You Drive Me & Cheryl to the Mall?” Maybe the empty nest version of that book is “Get the Hell Out of My House, But First Can I Make You Dinner?”
 
And maybe that’s what had me so cranky at the start of the week. Maybe I could feel the prickliness of feelings as I settled back into post-vacation life. Don’t get me wrong – as lives go, mine could be a lot worse. But there are also things I’d really like to change so that the sadness and occasional loneliness I feel when the kids leave don’t hurt so much. My younger daughter recently observed that what I really need is a roommate, but I think that I might be past that point in my life.
 
At least now I’ve got some tools in my emotional toolbelt to help calm me down when the teeth of my life start to bite down on my skin. Sometimes I can see a little mark when life is nipping a little harder than usual.
 
The meeting I like to go to on Wednesdays after work is just women and I told my hair guru, Lorraine, this week that it would benefit anyone – not just drunks. “It’s just so real,” I told her. It’s like we go through life wearing these masks and these meetings give us an opportunity to hang them up at the door to sit and be vulnerable with each other and talk about what it’s like to be a struggling human. While I no longer struggle with booze, I do struggle with being a person and having to deal with other people on a regular basis.
 
And that’s pretty much life. One minute you’re floating alongside your daughter watching a sea turtle swimming in the distance, his little legs propelling him forward through the water, and the next you’re sitting at your desk alone and wondering how you got there.
 
But instead of dousing it all in some nice Italian red, I can close my eyes and feel the Caribbean sun on my face, the salt from the warm ocean water drying along the tops of my legs. My daughters on either side of me with their faces -- that I love so much -- bathed in sunlight. All of us, together, moving forward.

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SUNDAY SHARES: Read, watch, cook, buy

• Apparently, I am not detail-oriented. First, I got SO many messages that in my hasty (and messy) linking, I shared the wrong one in my last email for the Old Navy joggers I wear every damn day. I got them in black and they are beyond comfy and now that I just revisited the website, think I might have to get them in the Thyme color. Let's be twinsies.

• It's more than toilet paper. I recently mentioned to a friend that I bought a piece of clothing from Costco and she seemed shocked I got involved in picking through those tables at the center of the store. Like, she was just in it for the toilet paper and roasted chicken. The girls and I went when we got back and I bought this Kirkland sweatshirt that I can't take off. 

• For when you no longer cook. We also picked up a container of Costco's beef stew which is weirdly DELICIOUS, but don't make the mistake we made, and think you're going to go home and immediately heat up and eat. It needs to cook in your slow cooker for hours. 

• Bucking what TikTok tells me. Okay, the books I devoured on the trip: Finally, read Colleen Hoover's Verity because my girls LOVED it. It was fine. The end was fun. Worth the hype? Meh.

• Sex dungeons are funny. Read Less is Lost, a follow-up to the Pulitzer-winning Less. I LOVED IT SO MUCH AND KEPT LOLing AND READING PASSAGES TO GIRLS. One about sex dungeons kept me in stitches for days. So. Damn. Funny.

• Read or listen to this. Listened to Lucy By the Sea, a follow-up to Oh William, which I also listened to. GAH SO GOOD. Forgiveness. Trying to make sense of the divide in our country. Marriage. Growing older. All of it in Maine. Absolutely lovely. 

• Target for the win. Ordered a few bathing suit pieces for trip, including these high-waisted bottoms and DD-cup top (an absolute rarity). I wore this one-piece all summer because it fit so well and bought it in another color.

xoAmy

Wow. Thanks for reading. Seriously, you're the best.

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