COLD COMFORT

Vacations are supposed to be a break from the stress and anxiety of daily life. But, as TAFFY BRODESSER - AKNER discovers on a trip to a favourite upstate New York lodge, sometimes it takes a truly special place—or a truly unusual event—for us to appreciate the freedom of being away from home.

- TAFFY BRODESSER - AKNER

I HAVE A MEMORY of going to Mohonk Mountain House in the Catskills with my grandmother and her boyfriend, Sid, when I was four or five years old. In this memory, I’m jumping on my bed while my grandmother begs me to go to sleep because we have so much to do tomorrow. My far more obedient older sister is already asleep, and Sid, a doctor, explains to me that, if I don’t stop, I’m going to hurt myself and I won’t be able to go ice-skating in the morning. Call that foreshadowing.

About four decades later, in the fall of 2019, I sat at my computer trying to narrow down the options available to a middle-class family with a two-week school vacation in December. Did we want to go somewhere warm or did we want to do a winter activity? Did we want to lie about or spring into action? I could have polled my husband and our two sons, who are 12 and nine. But I decided to meet my own needs first.

It had been a year of unrelenting motion. I’d gone on a book tour for my first novel; I’d done a long and harrowing investigative story on sexual harassment. My children’s growth had brought a million new obligations in terms of deadlines, worry, attention, and mandatory attendance at sports games. Every night, my husband and I did the things that we had to do. We made dinner. We supervised homework. We screamed, “I said, go to bed!” at our kids. We resentfully held tight to the hour of television we watched together, though there were endless negotiations about exactly what we should watch. And then we would both fall asleep no more than 20 minutes in.

So when I say I met my own needs first, I mean I opted out of the traditional back-and-forth about where we would go. I wanted to jump on a bed again. I wanted to jump up and down, not move forward.