What makes a vacation? Are we on vacation every day here, or only on days (like today) when Mark isn’t working and we’re not doing school?
At first I thought it was a half-vacation. Now I think, at least for me, it’s the whole time.
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George Carlin did a bit called “A Place for My Stuff” that I’ve been thinking about (link has both video and readable transcript):
Sometimes you leave your house to go on vacation,
And you gotta take some of your stuff with you…
Gotta take about two big suitcases full of stuff, when you go on vacation,
You gotta take a smaller version of your house, It′s the second version of your stuff…
Go read or watch, it’s pretty good.
Anyway, what I was thinking is that one of the things that makes a vacation—at least for me—is that you’ve voluntarily and temporarily left so much stuff behind you.
(Voluntarily and temporarily are both key. We haven’t lost our stuff in a hurricane or fire. We are not refugees. We have not renounced our worldly goods and gone to live as hermits or anchorites. We have not downsized to a retirement home. )
We have a lot of luggage, it feels like, and I won’t know until we see the weather in the mountains next week whether I seriously overpacked or packed just right (because I have a whole set of warm clothes I haven’t touched). We have about one tote bag’s worth of schoolbooks and worksheets. I brought a library book with me which I shouldn’t’ve, because someone reserved it after me and the library wanted it back yesterday. We have ice tools and climbing gear and helmets. Leo has a laptop and Simon an iPad.
But it’s still so much less than the sum of all our stuff.
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I once read somewhere a claim that men and women, in general, have different definitions of “comfort foods.” It probably doesn’t divide quite so neatly between male and female, could well be generationally outdated and has more to do with a dichotomy of personal history. The idea was that (generally speaking) men rattle off favorite comfort foods like pot roast and homemade apple pie, whereas women mention ice cream and packaged snacks.
The difference was supposed to come from what the food represents to you, especially whether it’s something you associate with labor or rest, being cared for or working to take care of others. A pot roast is maybe less comforting if generally you are the one who will have to make it. Ice cream and packaged snacks don’t demand time in the kitchen.
(Important note: This is not any kind of jab at my own husband, who makes the Thanksgiving pot roast every year. And it doesn’t quite work for me, because I find cooking relaxing. But I do grok the importance of associations to emotional content.)
So I wonder the same thing about “I left my stuff behind, so it’s a vacation.” For me I am sure that some of the rest comes from having a break from needing to care for or even think about all the stuff we have.
I am glad to have so many resources! A whole library of books; a pantry full of spices and canned goods; nearly always the right tool for the job. In fact I very much dislike being without a thing I expected to have, and I like a life of comforts and conveniences and the things that keep, or seem to keep, certain troubles at bay.
But I can’t deny that everywhere I look, when I’m at home, I see unfinished labor. This needs tidying, that needs mending, when was the last time I cleaned the…? And can I even find the things I need? And why am I tripping over this object left in the middle of the floor again? And the objects that have vague unsettlements attached… that game I bought the kids that we never play, the unfinished-book pile, the half-done project.
I should ask Mark, who has to go on quite a lot of work trips to not-particularly-exciting towns, whether not having any of his stuff with him feels freeing to him at all, like it does to me, or whether it’s more of a necessary nuisance.
We still have to sweep the floor and do the dishes in this little apartment, but there’s so little stuff in the way that it’s a pleasure.
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Having kids along with you who have particular needs for certain familiar items, sensations, and supports will color it a little bit, I suppose. Some stuff is almost non-negotiable. It’s certainly true when you have very young children, or kids with some types of medical conditions or neurodivergencies. As they grow and get better at self-regulating, at self-management of their medical needs, better at foreseeing and solving problems, better at making do—those are developmental skills—it gets easier to pare down what you carry. And we are getting there!
Still, we made room for a few things, and for some autonomy in prioritizing luggage space. For example, although I planned to buy toiletries and certain personal items over here, I told the boys to identify any familiar brand-name items they felt they needed to bring (Simon chose watermelon-flavored toothpaste, Leo his favorite hair care products—hey, I brought a couple of those too). And we made room and weight-allowance for Leo’s sleeping hammock and a metal-tube-type hammock stand that disassembles and has a carrying case. That’s pretty bulky, but sleeping well has such importance that we never questioned whether to take it along.
These extras only mean that I—who claim to love the paring-down to essentials—need to pare down a little farther. I can do that, to make travel a little less easier on those of us who need a bit more support. The “easier” will ripple out to the rest of us anyway.
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Another thing about the George Carlin bit that I like is his description of trips-within-trips and how you bring less stuff along with you each time, a subset of a subset of a subset:
Aww, no. NOW what do you pack? Right- you gotta pack an even SMALLER version of your stuff. The fourth version of your house. Only the stuff you know you’re gonna need. Money, keys, comb, wallet, lighter, hanky, pen, smokes, rubber and change. Well, only the stuff you HOPE you’re gonna need.
It puts me in mind of a matrushka doll, a nested set of boxes, a concentric Venn diagram. What you have, what you might need, what you know you’re gonna need, what you really need.
(Pause, though, to acknowledge that the diagram isn’t concentric for everyone; an acknowledgement that demands a response, gratitude and humility and discomfort and charity.)
Carlin’s bit is meant to be absurd, and it is, but also: it’s a reminder that those of us who live in plenty, so much plenty that it’s a bit of a relief to get away from our possessions once in a while—we can cut back on it. And maybe in some seasons of life it makes sense to lay up a cushion against all the might-happens, but eventually a lot of us—not everyone—will need to leave some of that stuff behind for our own good or someone else’s.
Ultimately we will leave it all behind, so there’s virtue in practicing. In deciding which stuff goes in which box, or circle; in shedding things like a snakeskin, and being bigger on the inside.
Will I remember this when I get home and contemplate my overstuffed bookshelves? Maybe, maybe not. I will let you know, when it happens, whether I am happy to see them again.
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