For instance, the resort features a great pool deck where you can park yourself in a padded lounge chair and have cute tropical drinks and lunch brought directly to you. In fact, we sampled enough of the bar menu to ring up an $80 tab in just a few hours.
I am not really practiced in the art of being served and pampered, but I always manage to rise to the occasion if necessary. Thus, we whiled away hours and hours sipping, munching and napping. The biggest decisions we encountered involved when to eat dinner (we weren't, after all, doing anything non-sedentary, so working up an appetite was a challenge), where to eat dinner and what to eat for dinner.
The contrast between these empty-nest vacations and the trips we took when the kids were younger was remarkable. Anyone with small children will be able to relate to this.
A trip to the beach involved packing a huge canvas bag with every item one could imagine needing, including sunscreen, snacks, drinks, clothes, goggles, towels and enough sand and inflatable toys to open a beach side shop. Appetites were easily developed from schlepping this bag, along with an umbrella and chairs, from the hot blacktop parking lot to a spot just close enough to the water to be able to see the kids, but just far away enough to prevent random acts of splashing.
The day would enfold like this: unpack the bag, take off the shoes, get a snack because someone was surely hungry by now. Apply sunscreen, set out chairs and umbrella and hike to the concession stand because the kids had noticed that there was ice cream. Build a sandcastle, dip into the water and drag everyone to the bathroom, stopping for some popcorn on the way back.
Sometimes, these exertions would tire the kids out enough that they would stay on one place for, I don't know, 20 or 30 minutes. Steve and I would take turns, one parent "relaxing" while the other parent stood sentinel to make sure no one drowned or picked up dead fish. I would devour whatever book I had hastily tossed into the beach bag, sometimes managing a grand total of 10 pages before it was my turn to be responsible. I longed for the day when I could enjoy the beach uninterrupted by the pressing needs of others.
We'd leave the beach just when the kids were about to hit the melt-down stage. The trip back to the car seemed to double or triple in length, and no one wanted to carry a thing. If we were lucky, very, very lucky, they would fall asleep in the car and complaints about being hot, sandy and sticky would be mercifully silenced for a while.
I thought of these vacations often as we lounged by the pool. I watched other families who had just begun the process of vacationing with small children as they went through a similar process.
The funniest thing? I found myself longing for a toddler to sit with in the shallow water. I actually wanted to change a diaper on a beach towel, and attempt to tighten a six year old's goggles without resorting to cussing. Indeed.
I hope that life brings us back around again to days at the pool with small children. They'll be our grandchildren, of course, and I will find great joy in watching them while my own kids struggle to read 10 pages and drink their way through the bar menu. Someday...
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