Mom Blogging & February Vacation

Photo Credit: Go Caribbean

Tell me we need yet another mom blogger! Daphne -- now all grown, married and living in Atlanta -- has requested that I pen more posts about my days as a young mother. Though I’ve largely resisted that suggestion, I can’t resist talking about February school vacation, unfolding right as we speak.

For the record, I’m working this week, with no worries about childcare. But be assured I can empathize with my younger colleagues who have scrambled to make arrangements.

Flash back to February 1985. With Daphne having started third grade the previous September, I abandoned my career as free-lance journalist -- with flexible hours and lots of work at home time -- for a full-time gig as a public affairs officer at an environmental regulatory agency based in downtown Boston.

With plans for a trip to Paris in place before I’d started the job, I’d been able to negotiate three weeks of unpaid leave in April – handily covering my daughter’s spring break. Her dad and I even had our summertime childcare arrangements in place, signing her up for eight weeks at a lovely overnight camp on Lake Winnipesaukee.

I may have taken Christmas week off to be with Daphne, perhaps taking her to visit grandparents in New York for part of the time. But February was a problem. The best option I could think of was the vacation week program at the Jewish Community Center – filled with gym activities and a few museum outings.

Daphne balked at the idea, and I was riddled with guilt at the prospect of my little darling spending her school vacation in what was frankly an institutional setting. While other working parents were lobbying the Brookline School Committee to eliminate this particular week off, I took a more pragmatic approach.

My daughter had wanted a pair of expensive Guess overalls, all the rage among Brookline third graders at the time. We ran out to the Chestnut Hill Mall and made the purchase. But the deal was Daphne couldn’t wear the overalls until she completed the JCC vacation program.

Curious about the origins of this particular week off, which didn’t exist when I went to school, I did an online search, and found a story in the Albany News-Tribune citing the energy crisis of the ‘70’s, when schools in the Northeast closed to save on fuel costs. Citing the hardship for parents, the article also seeks balance, quoting sources from the travel industry and a teacher’s union.

Recently I heard my stepson, Jeremy, lamenting the high price of airfare for a trip to Disneyworld during school vacation week. “Suck it up,” I said jokingly, having paid through the nose during all those years when trips functioned partly as family vacations and partly to alleviate the hassle of childcare arrangements.

Still, I have to admit that we avoided places like Disneyworld or any venue that was likely to be especially mobbed during a school vacation week. Next time I speak with Daphne, I’ll have to ask her if she remembers the fights over beach chairs at Barbados Beach Village during February vacation week.