On Failing the Family Vacation

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Updated at 10:30 a.m. ET on February 15, 2024

I wanted to go on a perfect family vacation this past Christmas, even though my family had fallen apart.

As a daughter, a wife, a mother, I’d never pulled it off, never experienced that joyous, together-away adventure that seemed to come so easily to others. When I was a child, it was on family vacations that I first contemplated running away from home. When I was married, it was on vacations that I first contemplated divorce. Once divorced, it was on vacations that I questioned the soundness of my new relationship.

This year, I told myself, it was going to be different.

I booked myself, my two kids, and my partner-boyfriend (I thought of him as somewhere between the two), on a Norwegian Cruise Line mega-ship bound for Mexico, Honduras, and Belize. Despite the bad rap cruises have for their norovirus outbreaks and abominable carbon footprint, and despite all of the funny, damning things David Foster Wallace, a cruise still seemed like the best option. I’d invited my parents and my sister’s family to come along, and I couldn’t imagine coming up with one destination that would satisfy everyone. Also, I had gone to graduate school to become a therapist, and I’d learned that anxiety arises from our conflicting desires for autonomy and connection. Cruising, a kind sales rep named Kristen or Crystal or Karen told me, offers both: “Everyone can explore on their own during the day, and then you can come together for meals and entertainment at night.”