I am on vacation. Technically, it’s a FAMILY VACATION. You know – dad and mom up front with the maps, kids in the back, arguing and getting everything sticky. Here in Colorado, hiking and rafting, we are a lovely picture – healthy, kind of crunchy, nice. Which may be why everyone seems to offer to take a family photo of us. “You can use it for the Christmas card,” we’ve heard more than once. I wince. I don’t need any more pictures of the four of together to contend with, even if they are digital. I don’t want to face the ethical moment they pose: save them for the kids or delete.

Some of my testiness at these photo ops comes from the fact that part of my live-in-the-future brain is already considering our holiday card. “Alex is in Africa for the year. The kids and I are here. We’re fine. But we’re not ‘us’ any more. From here on out, you can reach Alex at his Facebook page, which is where he lives.” There are so many snarky possibilities, many a take-off on the David Sedaris piece in Holidays on Ice in which a family records its utter dysfunction in its holiday card, from rehab to illegitimate children. I wonder if there might be some groovy letterpress cards I could buy on etsy that anounce, “Hey, we’re divorced. If, perchance, you remember what you bought us for our wedding fifteen years ago, let me know and I’ll return it, stains and all.”

But I digress. Family. Vacation. The Bradys in Yosemite when they got locked in the old time jail. Chevy Chase and clan RVing. Or, clearer in the jpegs in my mind – us in Michigan last summer, eating ice cream and swimming with friends. Us in LA two summers ago, the kids seeing palm trees for the first time at 2:00 AM when we finally arrived: “Mom!  What are those?!” Us in Chicago, eating ribs and peering out from the top of the Hancock building.

I don’t know if this is the last trip we’ll take together. Alex and I parent well together; we travel well together. We’re already talking about the possibility of Israel next summer as a way for the kids to see him while he’s in Africa. But it’s certainly the last trip as a family in the way in which our kids presently understand us. And that’s the hardest part. Harder even than the moments when I can’t breathe out of claustrophobia.

The day before we left to go on this gas and sugar-driven voyage, I ran into a friend who’s been divorced for about a year. “The hardest part,” she said, “is letting go of the story.” The story of the marriage. The story of two parents and two kids who go on trips together, watch soccer together, play board games together. There are so many other models of family these days – some really funky ones, ones that I’ve invited my husband to try to envision, though when I ask him to be creative he usually just says, “I don’t know,” which is part of the reason why we’re in this spot. With rainbow families and dads and dads, with grandmas raising kids and aunties, with all the possibilities, it’s absurd that this story holds such sway over many of us. But it does. 

I want to undo it. Take it apart, board by board, brick by brick, and start anew. I get scared and think I can’t do it. Not me, who can’t build anything. But then I remember what I said in a Reiki session last month: I don’t want to do or not do anything else out of fear. So hand me the hammer. Let me pound a few finger tips, but let’s get busy.