Permanent vacation

My family grew up knowing the importance of history. Living in central Virginia, we are about an hour away from major historical sites like Appomattox Courthouse, Yorktown, Williamsburg, and Bull Run. Even closer to home, Richmond is a hotbed for history involving both the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. You are never left wanting for knowledge; it is truly all around you. This has given me a unique perspective on the art of history. It has also given me an obscure set of knowledge that I tend to impart on a conversation whether it is solicited or not.

I wouldn’t trade that for the world, though. Visiting monuments, touring museums, going to Renaissance fairs, trekking through battlefields, and climbing into yet another World War II fighter jet are things I will never get tired of. Our vacations were never just for fun in my family, there was always an element of education my parents seeped into everything we did. Our photo albums are stocked with pictures of us kids holding wooden rifles in reenactments and trying on different soldiers’ uniforms. My parents made it a goal of theirs to visit the birthplace or house of every U.S. presidents, which meant that my siblings and I ended up visiting a lot of presidential homes. I remember going to visit a college I was considering in North Carolina and having to make a short excursion to see the birthplace of Andrew Johnson, just because we had to.

Outside of museums and battlefields, my family camped a lot. We lived in a rural part of the county, surrounded by trees and farmland, but we couldn’t get enough of the outdoors. Middle school and high school memories are marked by weekends spent in state parks across Virginia where we piled into our pop-up camper and came back mosquito bitten and sunburnt. Those are some of my favorite memories.

But what I’ve learned most is that you can make a vacation out of anything. Going to Georgia and Florida were all tag-along vacations that we attached to my dad’s business trips. My brother spent a few summers at camps in Ohio and Pennsylvania which gave us the opportunity to explore the Western parts of those states. We have extended family in New England which meant that every time we went to see them, we made stops on the way up from Virginia. After coming into close contact with someone with COVID-19, I was placed into quarantine housing at Mount St. Mary’s over the Easter holiday, which meant spending ten days isolated in a new room. To keep myself from suffering mentally, I tried to view it as a vacation, my own Spring Break since we were not able to receive one this academic year. Being away from everything, I could pretend, even momentarily, that I was in some new city that had untapped potential for me to uncover.

So really, vacations are more mental than physical. It doesn’t matter if they cost thousands of dollars or only money for gas. It could be a five-star resort or a cheap motel in a country town. For me, you should return from a vacation different than when you left. Even if its as simple as a new appreciation for a part of the world, at least you will have changed. Learned. Grown. I don’t believe in leisure for just the sake of leisure. Yes, there is a benefit to relaxing and recharging our mental and physical batteries. But it should never be done without a purposeful aspect of growth. That is, at least, how I was raised.

I can tell you how each and every vacation I’ve ever taken has changed me for the better. Whether it was during the hours spent in the car in silent reflection or in the new landscape I was shepherded into, something always left an impact on me. I believe I only have my parents to thank for this.

I’ve never been to Disney World and I probably never will. I’d still rather spend a weekend following tour guides through old buildings and looking at artifacts from centuries past. Is it any surprise that I chose to attend a university where I could be at a battlefield site in a matter of minutes? Is it any surprise that my favorite part about Richmond is not the James River or art district but the historical monuments and mementos all around the city?

Vacations are not just a time to relax and escape. They are a chance for reflection and rejuvenation in our busy lives. They provide the opportunity for deeper growth than we cannot achieve sitting stagnant in our homes. And when family are involved, nothing tests the bonds of love more than to be crammed into a car together for six hours. But love does not break; it only grows.

In our modern money-driven world, some people are insecure about the short list of places they’ve been to. I was seventeen the first time I left the country whereas some kids in my classes had been international travelers since they were in elementary school. Some of you reading may have never left the country or been on an airplane or even left the Eastern time zone. All of these things are superficial because it isn’t how much money you spend or where you go but who you are and how you became that person. For me, a foundational aspect of my identity has been the family trips that saw me up and down the East Coast in different museums and war sites. Is that Instagram worthy? Maybe not. But it makes my life worth it. You can have Disney; I’ll take the World.