WHAT DID YOU DO FOR SPRING BREAK?

Jenny, the last time I took a real vacation with my kids was December, 2019. The before times. We left for Cabo San Lucas on December 26th, the day after our last Christmas as an intact nuclear family. My kids didn’t know that yet. To them, it had been a normal Christmas with stuffed stockings and sugar cookies and a new pet gecko flicking its tongue in an enclosure under the tree. It was a normal vacation, too. For them.  The bad news wouldn’t come down for another few weeks, and a month after that the whole world would shut down. “My childhood is over,” my eldest said, sitting on the same beat-up brown couch where I’d nursed him as a baby. He was 9. I sat for months and watched him weather like a time-lapse of a painted post.

We realized this year, all of us, that we were long overdue for another trip to Mexico. In a sunnier season, in spring, in twenty-twenty-fucking-four. The After Times. So we went! Me, the kids, their dad and his partner. Before we left, I joked that I’d set myself up for the ultimate third-wheel comedy, the kind of movie that used to have a boffo theatrical run but now gets dumped on Peacock. Jokes aside, I knew I was going to have a good time. I love everyone on the roster, I get a dopamine hit just from reading the words “all-inclusive,” and I am incapable of having a bad day if I have chilaquiles for breakfast. Also, I planned the whole vacation myself because I get off on creating experiences for other people; I’m admittedly a mediocre hostess at home, but I’m brilliant on the road. Hand over your passport and let me handle it. Trust me!