Weekend with my mother

No one is giving my mother’s request for a family weekend getaway much thought. Maybe because a summer break needs to be longer than a weekend, or even an extended weekend. All that planning, all that travelling, for it to be over in the blink of an eye? On the family group, where my kid brother has been given charge of rallying the family’s forces, he has been getting little traction. With prices hardening and bookings becoming increasingly difficult, no one can blame him for sending peevish messages.

Meanwhile, plans for longer vacations are under more active — if secretive — consideration. My own family rarely shares these with me, having labelled me the holiday wet-blanket. I am loath to commit to dates because office programming, fluid at the best of times, is likely to change just when you’ve splurged on non-refundable tickets and rooms. Better, I think, to pay more at some later date, than to lose it all on the whim of a colleague. My family tells me they would like us all to vacation together. There was a time I thought this charming. I now know better. All they’re hoping for is for me to fund the trip. 
 

When they are able to spend their own money, they do not care to include me. These are vacations to be enjoyed within their intimate circle of friends. So, my wife, who was in one place earlier this week, is going to be in quite another as you read this — and they’re both far from home. Of course, she says it’s work, or at least work-related, but I do not think that is the truth, or at least the entire truth. I miss her more than she misses me when she is away from home. There is no one to hang the clothes in the cupboard, you see.

Passing by my daughter’s room, I heard her arguing with friends about where she did not want to go this summer, and that included New York because, she said, she was “bored” of the most exciting city in the world, or London, because, well, how many times can you return to the same place again. So, her friends, one batch of which is meeting in NY, and the other in London, is collaborating on how to start, or end, their trip in a part of Europe in which my daughter has some interest. Having travelled extensively these last years on bachelorettes, bridal showers, shopping escapades and getaways for no reason at all, my daughter, I think, would prefer something closer home. She has been the first — and only one so far — to endorse the weekend break with my mother.

I am not privy to my son’s holiday plans since he no longer shares them with us, having recently acquired a wife. He will be travelling for professional reasons to a distant part of the world, but unlike in previous years, he has not asked us to join him for an extended sabbatical as he would previously. Since no one seems keen to have me around any longer, I’m signing up for my mother’s retreat. I had thought being on my own would be liberating, but you don’t want everyone else to have fun while leaving you to cope with New Delhi’s heat, dust and outages.