The look you get when you haven't been on vacation
I haven't been on vacation this summer. Yes, I spent a few days with my partner in Saint-Tropez (if you want to go there, these are my favorite spots), but really just three weeks on an adventure with my partner and kids, nope. My partner had to work so we folded the vacations around the summer. Twice (yes) in May and when the school bell rings to announce the autumn break, we are heading full speed towards Schiphol. In short, you don't need to feel sorry for us, but it still feels like our kids are the underdogs of the class.
“Did you have a nice summer? Where have you been?” Well, we were in Wijk aan Zee, a weekend in Groenlo and oh yes, the kids also stayed in Sibculo. Try standing tall when you get bombarded with adventures from others. One went hiking in Canada for five weeks, another went to Vietnam for two and a half weeks, and Barbara, yes, she spent the whole summer in Bali.
Again, we do get our sun hours and our kids enjoyed this summer just as much as the other summers with more adventure, but somehow it feels like I have neglected them. Or at least, I haven't spoiled them to the fullest.
My youngest daughter had her first swimming lesson after the vacation last week. Do you have kids at the swimming age? I have here are some style tips on how to survive that scorching hot pool a bit charmingly, but that's beside the point. Of course, the teacher also went through the whole list with the question of where they had been this summer. My daughter swims in the village of Bloemendaal (where 32% from the village belongs to the richest 10% of the Netherlands), so you understand that my girl's swimming buddies weren't exactly camping in southern France. Finally, the teacher came to my girl. “And you, Iggy? Where were you?” My daughter looked at her, paused for a moment and said: “Just at home in Haarlem. I had already been in May and you can't have everything in life.”
And that, dear friends, I found to be a beautiful, relativizing lesson on a Sunday afternoon.
