Most summers, the time we spend at my mom’s house on Southport is marked by at least some of life’s practicalities. Because we come up for a glorious few weeks, we have to navigate our three kids’ seasonal commitments at home in Connecticut, fitting in our dates around summer camp schedules and social obligations. Our visits exceed PTO allowances at work, so we turn quiet spaces into impromptu offices and take meetings while guests drink coffee on the porch.  
 
This is the reality - and I can’t at all complain - about having access to a spot that friends love to visit. Their vacation is our happy attempt at straddling two worlds: hosts and guests; working less but still working some.  

This year was different. Our daughter is headed to college this fall and wanted time at home to see friends and start packing. I recently took on a new job. My husband had an out-of-town work conference, and we attended a friend’s July wedding in Maryland.   

With hopes to resume more lengthy visits next summer, my husband and I settled on one solid week with friends for this year’s Maine vacation.  

Because it was just one week, I decided that "vacation" would be front and center.  

We were lucky that the group visiting - friends who went to college with my husband - are the type that make relaxing easy, ensuring my mom and I feel less like hosts and more like royalty: cooking dinners, buying supplies, and waxing poetic on what this annual trip means to their families. They bring guitars and fill the house with music.   

Our kids, all teenagers or just about, adore each other and, crucial for the adults’ ability to unwind, are now independently mobile, making repeated trips into town for ice cream at Downeast or walking in a big gaggle to hit the dock then pool. Creating and cementing their own Maine traditions.  

For my part, I now realize that “vacation mode” is something you must choose and, in this modern world, deliberately. So, I put my phone on “Do Not Disturb” and left it in my bedroom most of the time. I went for daily walks on the mossy trail that leads through the woods and ate whenever I felt like it.  

Distractions aside, I focused on my friends and family, available for the deepest of conversations and the longest of good laughs. I spent entire, unadorned minutes staring at the flames escaping the Solo Stove or listening intently to the lyrics of a song someone chose for just that moment. I let that moment, among all the rest, sink in.   

I acted as the tourist in places I know well, rolling up to Robinson’s Wharf and reading the entire menu, like I had no idea what I might order (I always order the mussels). It wasn’t hard! My “vacation mode” plan worked immediately, and so well.  

It felt like the time off - really off - changed my very essence, right down to my cellular structure.  

At the end of the week, I felt dejected to an extent that seemed out of proportion. I wondered why. Shouldn’t a real vacation, rather than the ones when you’re only-most-of-the-way there, refresh you to the point of contented wholeness?  

I think the opposite happened. I wasn’t done with the long cocktail hour discussions about our midlife wins and struggles, about our children growing up. Or with observing - emails and commitments aside - how the sunlight filters through the tall pines in the woods near the house. How the moss there feels so soft on a foot slipped out of a sandal.  

Perhaps there is more to it than that. This year, I really needed the respite that Maine provides. I’m going to miss my daughter so much when she goes to college. My new job is incredibly fulfilling but, like learning all new things, it’s hard.  

Reentry into real life felt weightier than usual because I had jumped into vacation feet first, hands raised. I had cannonballed. No regrets.  

I decided that the answer might lie (as answers so often do) in taking what I learned with me. The Do Not Disturb function on a phone is easily engaged when we need reminding that life’s distractions - well, most of them - are under our control, not the other way around. Even when fall activities come rushing back in, undisturbed stretches of book-reading and lazy dinners on the patio are there for the taking. The long talks and raucous laughs of old, easy friendship are available off-season, too.  

And our home here in Connecticut is surrounded by hiking trails I’ve traversed but not as often as I might. I bet, when in need of a quiet moment, they’ll serve their purpose of a quick and potent reset, just like the tall pines and gentle slopes on Southport. I’m going to find out.  

About Cara McDonough 

Last year, Cara wrote about trying to see a whale, and in previous years she wrote about our pandemic summer, and watching her children grow up during visits to Maine. She’s also written for a variety of local and national outlets including regular posts on her blog: www.caramcduna.com.