Last week, Hank and I loaded up our family wagon and our three little chicks and headed east to the Outer Banks in North Carolina. It was a real vacation. The kind where you let your hair go frizzy and read a full book, cover to cover. The good kind. The slow kind. The transformative kind of vacation.

We left right after work and Hank drove into the night. I fell asleep to the mesmerizing passing of the reflectors in the center line and sporadic headlights somewhere in Ohio and awoke around 2 a.m. in West Virginia. Sloppy Joan was in and out of sleep, thrashing and whining every 5 minutes or so. The timer had popped; our little turkey was done. After we pulled her and the others out of the car and stumbled into our double queen room, she shocked us all with an allstar rally, positively giddy at the excitement of a hotel room.

We walked out to the car Saturday morning to discover our surroundings. It was like falling asleep in the depths of tall grass only to wake up in a field of towering sunflowers. We were in the mountains now. Beautiful, lush green Moana mountains. A soft fog was settled in between the peaks, with the morning sunlight piercing through the smoke. It was breathtaking. I held my lukewarm morning coffee, sipping and soaking in the unexpected beauty, crests enveloping us on every side.

More than 9 hours and 15 potty pit stops later, we arrived at our home away from home for the week. Sure as an army of ants will follow a trail of tacos, a curious child will take a flight of stairs as far up as they go. So was the case with our chicks, as they flew up to the eagle’s nest deck before we even went into the house. This third level structure was constructed solely to twist and torture my fears of a child tumbling to their doom, but redeemed itself by providing a view that drained my lingering stress pangs. As they turned to run back down the way they came, I closed my eyes as my ears found what they’d been seeking since we crossed the south bridge onto the island: Waves. The rolling crescendo was punctuated only by the chatter of carefree seagulls. To the east, blue waters. To the west, the sun setting over the sound. There, standing on the treetops, I took a true breath for the first time in two months.

The house was perfect for our little crew. Bunk beds for the girls, a king-size mattress for me and the Mr., a fully functioning kitchen, living room and cool blue color palette. We stayed in Hatteras, which was the southernmost area of the Outer Banks, and much less commercial than some of the other sections. This was what the doctor ordered. There was a market with a friendly grocer just up the street, a handful of eateries, a nature center and a Wings, brimming with cheap ocean crap. We required little more.

It took me until Monday to really feel it. Sitting in a lowrider beach chair, cold beer in hand, watching my girls building a sand castle with my husband beside me, I realized I was light. Nothing mattered. We had nowhere to be and no one to answer to. We were five souls set free for at least six more days, though I tried not to count them. There’s a weightlessness that comes with severing the tethers to your everyday life that can’t be described or replicated. It’s the closest one can come to true peace, I think.

That afternoon, a sweet gal who’d been coming to the area since she was a child – one of the many kind people we encountered on our trip, which also included a 55-year-old nurse who loaned Spike her kite that Hank eventually had to chase through sand dunes and up telephone poles – became our personal Hatteras insider. For starters, at our new friend Kim’s advisement, I began putting coconut oil in the girls’ hair in the mornings to avoid those pesky beach tangles. Game changer! Aside from grooming, and among other dining and sea creature pointers, she also gave us a tip that would change our agenda for the remainder of our vacation.

“Oh! And you have to come out at night to see the ghost crabs,” Kim said.
“OK,” I nodded, feeling sceptical but unseasoned.

And so, one evening after dinner, I stayed in with Sloppy Joan as Hank and the older two dug up flashlights, doused themselves in bug spray, and trotted down to the shore in the dark in search of these special night creatures. When they hadn’t returned after 30 minutes, I assumed our tour guide might have been off. But no. I was distracted from my fourth consecutive episode of Chopped (We don’t have cable anymore) when I caught a tunnel of light on the porch out of the corner of my eye. It was Spike, pressing her face against the glass sliding door, shining the light up her nose like a camp counselor unwrapping a juicy tale about escaped serial killers. She stormed in.

“Mom! You won’t believe it,” she exclaimed. She was sorting through the words scattered and sprinting through her little head.
“Tell me!” I urged.

JoJo came in, Hank trailing behind her, a fog of Off! aggressively, offensively penetrating my nostrils.

“There were these white crabs everywhere!” Spike said.
“Really?” I exaggerated my enthusiasm.
“Really,” JoJo took over. “And there were big ones, and small ones and they were so fast – right, Dad – so fast!”
“So fast,” Hank agreed.
“That’s so cool! We should have gone with you,” I said.
“Yeah! But we’re going to go every night. Dad said we can go every night,” Spike said.

And we did.

Each night, drunk on a heavy dinner of fried fare, senseless carbs and some form of ice cream, we would change into long sleeves and pants and walk under more stars than we’d ever seen back to the beach. We’d wait until the last possible second to turn on our lights and once we did, we’d be met with hundreds of sets of beady little black eyes. Hank would try to catch them, an endearing glimpse of him as a curious child. Their mechanical legs were deceptively speedy. The girls would move from one to the next, screeching while proclaiming they weren’t afraid of them one bit.

But it was Sloppy Joan who confronted their master. One evening, our fearless third born took the end of her flashlight and poked at a particularly large crab repeatedly, until the crustacean was forced to raise up on his hind legs and point his pinchers toward his opponent. The four of us stood around her, shouting like drunk 40-year-olds at an MMA fight.

“Oh my gosh!”
“Get ‘em SJ!”
“You’ve got this!”
“Back up!”
“Poke him!”
“Put the flashlight down!”
“Hit him! Hit him!”
“Stop it! Stop it!”
“Oh for–!”
“Yes! Yes!”

Eventually Hank grabbed her and pulled her out of the ring as the giant crab scurried away, one eye on the insane family from Indiana, and one eye on the freedom of his sand hole. We stood there for a few minutes, watching lightning in the clouds somewhere far off over the ocean, and let the adrenaline wash away with the tide.

Spike had her sights set on a conch shell. It was all she wanted, and let me tell you, when Spike wants something, she’s going to make that shit happen. Speculating that the most prized shells came ashore first thing in the morning, I set my alarm for 5:30 a.m. I went in to find her nestled next to JoJo, her mouth gaping open in complete surrender to sleep. I shook her gently and asked if she wanted to go sunrise shell hunting. She was dressed in 3 minutes and we were quietly slipping out onto the porch.

It was a first for both of us; Sunrise on the beach.

I let my brunette beauty walk on ahead and, because they were so sweet, I committed the moments to memory, so I could always remember her that way: The golden ball of the day’s first light at her shoulder, rising above the sand dunes and illuminating her bronzed cheeks. The toothless smile and unbridled joy when she finally found her shell. The surprising size of her footprints in the surf staggered next to mine, proof my baby’s growing up too fast.

By Thursday, I was starting to feel heartsick over the thought of our week coming to an end. I had become accustomed to our lazy routine. Our days consisted of hours on the beach, interrupted only temporarily every few hours by food and sleep. Our girls, only one of which had been to the sea, had become uninhibited mermaids, in spite of two jellyfish stings for Spike and a traumatic crab pinch.

Watching them in the waves, because they were so sweet, I committed the moments to memory. So I could always remember them that way: SJ standing in the surf in a neon pink bikini, her piercing eyes beneath the brim of her matching sun hat. Her browned skin. Her smile. The relaxed waves in her hair and a stormy sky behind her. My JoJo running confidently across the tide, surfing and splashing and begging me to watch as she does it all over again.

Reality is a force greater than any magnet. It is a gravitational pull you can only outrun for so long, and soon it was time for us to leave. As the miles between our little sliver of paradise and our home, our jobs, our responsibilities grew smaller, the nagging circumstances we’d temporarily abandoned returned. Texts and emails started flashing on our phones. The older two started arguing in the back. The universe knew the sand was running out in our magical hourglass.

Why is it so dang hard to hold onto that vacation nirvana? Retaining that calm is like trying to hogtie the wind or stand in a rainbow. Impossible.

When I meditate now, I picture the waves. I picture myself sitting in that chair staring into the horizon with my daughters’ freckled cheeks and soaring birds peppered in. I try to smell the saltwater air. I grasp at the peace, but it evaporates in my desperate hands.

How do we carry it home with us? How do we bottle up that zen so we can sip from the vessel a little at a time as needed, buying time until we can replenish the contents all over again?

When I was on vacation, I had ideas. Ideas for books. Ideas for our home. Ideas about how I was going to change our lives and be less short-tempered and seize every second. I was all juiced up on joy and high on leisure. Now I’m frantically sniffing out a source for my next hit. It feels like our traditional roles are rigged to favor routine. Like we walked into an arranged marriage with monotony.

Eight summers. I have eight summers left until my JoJo is 18 and no longer obligated to be around me. Do I want her to remember me as list-loving Mommy or wave-riding Mommy? Ideally I could be like an Oreo. A sweet, enjoyable layer of happiness sandwiched between two essential spheres of structure and stability. I want to inject enough of my vacation self into my life that, overall, they remember me being pretty darn enjoyable overall.

Ah, vacation … you beautiful summer fling. I’ll never forget you.