How do you holiday when you’re a solo Mum of five? With great bloody difficulty! The logistics alone in terms of juggling 20 days of Annual Leave and 84+ school holiday days - mind boggling. We are about to head off for another ‘holiday’. That means we travel to the other end of the country where the kids get to spend time with whanau they love and adore and I get to work from conveniently located offices nearby. Solo parenting is all about making the most of what you have! The fact that we travel cross country gives the kids a sense of going away. And they can ‘holiday’ while I work. Working in a different part of the country helps me to see my job from a different perspective, and meet people in our organisation I might otherwise never meet. It helps that they’re a great group of people too. Win-win? So far.
I try to make sure of course that I do spend actual time with the kids doing proper holiday stuff. There is the obligatory shopping trip with the daughters, while the boys carry the bags. You would think! ALL five of my kids LOVE shopping. And they all have million dollar shopping lists that are grossly mismatched to their mother’s something thousand dollar salary. Shopping with sons vs. shopping with daughters? I swear there’s a whole ‘nother outblog waiting to be explored there! And we have developed a movie day/night. Day for the young ones with their young cousins. And night for the older kids. And one other big outing. All about mixing it up!
I get a bit stressed taking the kids to ‘holiday attractions’. Everything is about ‘whanau/family’ in the holidays. Family meal deals, family concession passes, family specials. You can feel pretty self-conscious of your reality when you see families all around you. It is hard. And sad. I know I feel the loss more than the kids and I try to wo-man up and be brave so my kids see strength. And I mostly get away with it. But there are signals, shifts, nuances and my kids know my sadness. They have learnt from my reactions, their reality and experience and smile politely at the nice hospitable people who speak as if ‘Dad’ is a part of the equation.
And speaking of Dad. I have accepted that I cannot say how holidays should look for him and the kids. I spent a fair few sets of holidays planning and booking time for the kids to be with the Dad. Pick them up here, on this day, at this time. Do this, do that, none of this, none of that. Threats. Emotional blackmail. Not my finest moments. Caused me nothing but stress. In retrospect, I realise how much of that was me trying to maintain control. Now I let him know the holiday dates and if there is an offer from him to spend time with the kids, I pack their bags, take them to the pick up point and wave them goodbye. And if there is no offer, no worries. I live and learn. That goes for his whanau too. I put the offer out there and if they want to see the kids, that gets worked into holidays too. I cant be evil and keep my kids from them. Only in my alternate world lol.
Holidays should be all about whanau. And there is one special whanau that no matter what, no matter how late the planning, how last minute the phonecall will always put us up every holiday. The pot is always on when we get there, the beds are always made, and it always feel like home. I hope everybody has a whanau like that. What would we do without the Widdicombe Whanau - whanau4life.
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