My Dad Says Our Family Trips Make Him Feel He Still Has a Future

On a summer afternoon at Nikki Beach in St. Tropez, a DJ was playing ABBA, white napkins were waving over the tables, and the author's two parents, both in their 70s, got up and danced. She hadn't expected it. Her 21-year-old son had asked to come to the beach club, and the family had eaten lunch there a few years earlier and wanted to return for the full Euro summer scene. Her mother has since called the day one of her favorites.

The afternoon landed differently because of something her father said earlier on the trip. He is 75. He told her that if the family's annual vacations stopped, he would feel he was closer to dying. He isn't ready for that, he said, and she told readers she isn't either. The remark stopped her, and she admits it frightened her a little. She knows her parents are aging, but she had not started to imagine life without them, and she spent the rest of the trip looking at them through that new lens.

The tradition is twelve years old. The author, her husband, her parents and her son have traveled the world together every year. Her son was 9 when it began. He is now 21 and brings his girlfriend. Her parents, in their mid-70s, have some health challenges that call for more patience and care. She sits in the middle, adjusting each trip so everyone can take part. She once planned for adventure. Now she weighs walking distances, downtime, the burden of unpacking, and what her parents can comfortably do, while keeping things fun for the 21-year-olds.

Seeing her father dance with her mother, laughing, she understood more of what he meant. To him, she writes, these trips are more than vacations. They are something he still looks forward to, evidence that there are more places to go and more life ahead. Her mother's delight, she suggests, may only have needed a "darty," the day-party term her college-age son taught her.

His comment also exposed a blind spot. She had been viewing the trips as the planner and caregiver, worrying about how much her parents could walk, whether they needed an afternoon off, whether she had scheduled too much. He was thinking about something else: what it means to still be able to go. She also writes of the loss of her son Jake fifteen years ago, a grief that still weighs on her, and says she knows how quickly everything can change.

The family's definition of a good trip has changed accordingly. Early on she wanted to cross places off a bucket list, and the group went to Africa and the Galápagos. Success is now measured in uninterrupted time together. They choose destinations where they don't have to pack and unpack every three or four days and can settle in. The moments she values most come after the excursions: cocktails by the pool, a last glass of wine, music, rounds of Flip 7 or Pass the Pigs, a beer on a random street in a place they may never find again.

She doesn't know how many more years the group, now five going on six, will be able to travel together, and she hopes it is many. But her father's remark convinced her that counting the years misses the point. They had this trip, and while they were on it, everyone could still dance.

She expects the tradition to outlast her parents. Someday, she says, the trips will belong to her son and his family. She is grateful her parents gave them that, and in no hurry to inherit it.