a holiday of one's own
Regaining that sense of a quiet self which mothers sometimes lose as they’re raising their children and working for a living.
I’m heading off on holiday next week on my own. I tried to convince the other people in my household to come with me, but nothing doing.
When your kids are small, holidays are simpler. You announce that you’re going on holiday and this is the destination, and they have no choice but to come, as they’re too small to reach the counter tops in the kitchen, and leaving them behind would be illegal.
Nowadays it’s different. My kids are seventeen and twenty. The twenty year old has booked a holiday of her own in Queensland to visit friends and find out what it’s like to travel independently. The seventeen year old has a girlfriend and a car and a measure of independence and would prefer to stay home unless the right holiday is on offer. I mistakenly thought that he and I might go to Hobart for some mother-son time. Clearly I’ve left it too late and he’s grown out of any desire for that. He told me he’d rather go to Melbourne as a family.
By this time I felt like a break from my role as an unwanted social secretary so I decided to go on my own. And now I can’t wait!!
When I look back at the photos of us on holiday as a family of four, we’ve had fun. There’s always a set of photos taken when I’ve balance my precious camera on a rock or a bench seat and used the timer to take a few of us as a group. Those photos capture all the identities within the family - the photo bomber, the sulks, the youthful exuberance, the exuberance, the tolerating being there, the outdoors and surprisingly loving it. I chuckle when I think of those photos. I struggle to accept that those holidays, those years and those kids are gone.
But when you go on holiday with young kids inevitably there is a lot of compromising. And that’s where the prospect of a holiday alone starts to look promising. When I’m in Hobart next week I’ll go to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, and I’ll look at all the pictures and artefacts for as long as I want to and read the signs alongside them too, without anybody hanging around in a slouch in my peripheral vision asking How long is this going to take?
The other enticing prospect is a room of my own. When I book for the family, I’m thinking about cost and privacy and who minds sharing a room, whether we’ll go self-contained and whether there’s a good family restaurant nearby.
This time I’ve thought about what I want for myself from the place I stay.
A bath for long and sumptuous soaking.
A kitchen to make myself cups of tea and a bite to eat, and somewhere to sit and dine. If I get takeaway one evening, I don’t want to feel like I’m eating it in my bedroom.
A living area. I want to move around and not feel as if I’m in a well-decorated cell.
Proximity to the restaurants I want to eat at. Seafood and fine dining come to mind. I plan on visiting Peppina, Massimo Mele’s restaurant at the Tasman in Hobart central, and I’d like it to be walking distance.
All of these things were answered by the Salamanca Inn, which is right in the heart of Hobart’s old docks are at Salamanca, which is now tourism central but in a good way, with shops and precincts and old convict stone built walkways to mooch around in.
What will I do in and out of this room of my own? I will rest! I will read and write and get up when I want to and the room will be warm (it’s freezing cold at home currently, and half of our house is unheated.) I will mooch about the shops, I will visit writing and arty friends, I will deliver books to giftshops, and I will eat frequently in lovely cafes, definitely having a seafood chowder. I will go to TMAG and possibly to Makree House the arts and crafts house and garden, where I will indulge all my senses in envisaging the people who designed it and once lived there, and spend a happy hour imagining what it must have been like.
Mostly I’ll relish my own company, and solitude. Not to be talking about the minutiae of life, whether I know what time I’ll leave for work in the morning or what we’ll be having for dinner. I don’t mind talking about these things of course, they’re the stuff that family life is made of. But there’s no denying it will be nice to have a break from them, and to regain that sense of my own quiet self which mothers sometimes lose as they’re raising their children and working for a living. We’re very lucky if we can find some time in the week or the year to think about who we were before, and still might be.
Philip Larkin says it with some force in his poem Best Company, about the push and pull between being social and seeking solitude. Here’s the last stanza. I’ll be making like that simple snail next week.
Viciously, then, I lock my door.
The gas-fire breathes. The wind outside
Ushers in evening rain. Once more
Uncontradicting solitude
Supports me on its giant palm;
And like a sea-anemone
Or simple snail, there cautiously
Unfolds, emerges, what I am.
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Love your writing, and your wit, Fiona. Enjoy making like the simple snail ... and re-discovering the gloriously colourful sea-anemone you are!
Hello Fiona, I enjoyed reading your story about holidays on your own and the memories of those busier family-filled ones. Hobart is a wonderland, enjoy. I have younger children and can only dream of those days when you can think and remember who you used to be. But as you say it is always with a touch of nostalgia and yearning for time together as a family. Glad I found you here on Substack. 🙏