the dirty little secret of my summer holiday
and why I won't be ashamed of it
This is a photograph of me holiday in Spain last week. The first and only real holiday I have taken without my children in twelve years — fourteen if you count the holidays I took with my husband and stepson before my own children were born.
Below the paywall is a photograph of my sons taken the same day. They are at summer camp in Canada, on a lake in northern Ontario, where they have spent most of the month of August, with the support of their Canadian grandparents.
The acclaimed British memoirists Caro Giles and Clover Stroud (two of my favourite writers on Substack) both recently wrote moving pieces on the importance of taking time away from their children and the conflict they felt about doing so. In Caro’s case it was a trip abroad with a new love and in Clover’s a rare chance to reconnect with her beloved Pete, father of her three younger children. Both of these women wrote so honestly and openly, reading their words made my heart soar. In turn, I was forced examine my own mix of emotions, the alternating waves of elation and shame I feel at being apart from my boys for the better part of a month. I did not feel I could — or indeed should — write about it as they had, which was curious.
Why does my situation feel so different? I wondered. Why am I able to be happy for Caro and Clover but not for myself?
So I swam and I walked and I napped and I thought and after a while I realised it’s because I’m a single sole care mother. My childless holiday wasn’t planned as either a work trip or a romantic interlude and this felt transgressive and wrong.
A mother is expected to be engaged in the act of caring for others at all times, either intimately or monetarily. When and if she takes time away from her children she is meant to be doing it for someone else, ideally a man or an employer. She is either meant to be providing hands-on care or caring for someone who might (theoretically) in turn provide for her — and by extension her children. This is why it’s fine for a lone single woman to go to a beauty bar for a manicure but not down to the the pub for a pint. A woman can be temporarily relinquished from her maternal duties but only to perform acts in service of others (beautification versus quenching her thirst). There has to be another person’s pleasure or money involved in the transaction for her freedom to be socially acceptable. It’s nonsense of course, but welcome to the world.
I’ve been away from the boys many times before, but I haven’t gotten on a plane, train or even behind the wheel of a car and sped away from them for anything longer than a couple of hours for the sole purpose of my own relaxation and pleasure. Never once in a decade and a half, have I said, ‘I’m taking this time just for me.’
After bundling the boys off to Canada at Gatwick airport earlier this month, I rented out my London house and flew to Mallorca where I spent two weeks at a friends’ house swimming, hiking, reading, napping and thinking. I was joined by a handful of close friends, most of whom are in various states of singledom, all without children. For the first couple of days I watched my friends lazing about enjoying themselves and felt panic-stricken. I kept having to remind myself I was not doing anything wrong.
People are allowed to enjoy themselves. Rest is good for you. Pleasure is healthy and normal.
The boys were not being neglected after all. They were at camp, having the time of their lives. I mean look at them, for heaven’s sake.