VACATION?

Back before I became a "Child Care Professional" I was a "Child Care Amateur." What is a "Child Care Amateur?" It is another word for "A Parent."

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As a parent I, of course, received no pay for caring for my children. Nor did I earn any sort of vacation from caring.

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To be honest, what many call "a vacation" involved a doubling of the time I spent caring. No longer could I count on school teachers to help me, because teacher's were taking a well-earned rest. What a "vacation" meant was I cared for my children every hour they were awake.

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Even a parent who earns two weeks vacation a year knows that children are "on vacation" far more than two weeks a year. However I was self-employed, and tended to work 52 weeks a year. I was faced with a conflict between time-for-the-kids and time-for-the-job.

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It was exhausting, and at one point I was tempted to take a job in Kuwait. The temptation was that I might make $100,000.00 in six months. As I toyed with the idea, the temptation whispered to me that the money would make up for the fact I was basically abandoning my wife and children. It stated abandonment was not really abandonment, because I'd have pots of money and could make up for the abandonment "later."

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However back in the the 1980's I lived with Navajo and Zuni who used to leave their homes and communities to make huge wages walking I-beams 80 stories above city streets, far from their home villages, (home villages where not a single house was even two stories tall.) When, after six months, these men returned home with fabulous paychecks they were treated with the respect a wealthy philanthropist gets. They stated it didn't feel all that good, because they would rather have been treated like a Dad.

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Remembering these men, I decided against making $100,000 in six months. To be honest, I didn't even make $100,000 in six years, because decided I really ought care for the lives that my wife and I created, and, as things worked out, this involved Home-schooling.

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Often, rather than going to work, I found myself teaching reading, writing and arithmetic. I had to be done by noon, (because I still had to hustle up some work and "bring home the bacon,") however, (judging from test scores,) my children received a good education.

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I had to work locally, but I could drive a battered pick-up truck that cost $500.00, while my friends drove far finer vehicles that cost $25,000.00. My wardrobe was jeans and t-shirts, while their wardrobe cost thousands. They had far more status than I did. However they spent most of every weekday away from their children, as I enjoyed something money can't buy: Being a parent.

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But vacations were not part of my life. Even before I had any farm animals, I was in some ways like a farmer who must milk and feed animals 365 days a year.

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This is not to say I didn't need breaks. I did. However the breaks tended to be things that fit into my week. Things like watching a sunrise, going to listen to a local concert, spending an afternoon blueberry-picking or fishing or skating or swimming, or even an entire day skiing or at a beach. And also little breaks, time spent simply contemplating this thing we call life, (contemplation which some call yoga, and others call philosophy, and others call art and poetry and music, and others call prayer.)

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My breaks took hours, rather than two-weeks, but they were enough.

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When I look back across time, I doubt our forefathers had the ideas we have, concerning vacations, (or even Saturdays.) They worked, as farmers, in a manner that burned an average of 4000 calories per day, yet managed to be more serene than us. With less "time-to-relax," they were more relaxed.

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This concept was driven home to me last week when I watch how deranged things became, locally, when school let out for spring break. Some parents whisked their children off to places like Disney world, while others had to work and had to ask others, (such as my wife and I,) to keep their children all day, (rather than merely before school and after school.)

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I then noticed something I've noticed before: Often children seem to expect that, because it is vacation, they should have some sort of sensational experience. In a sense they demand a Disney world.

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I disappoint them, in that respect. Instead I attempt to teach them about the simple breaks. Watching a sunrise. Listening to birds. Going for a hike. Or, (and this was Grace's idea,) simply making and flying a kite.

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It may not be Disney world, but its surprising how swiftly they forget all about Disney world.

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Caleb