I read this post recently and was very moved by it. When you are in the middle of parenting, it seems like it’s a never ending challenge of refereeing arguments and trying to set screen time limits that you know won’t mess them up. You worry about reading levels and temper tantrums and bullies on the bus, and you don’t think that there will be eventually an end to all that parenting.

My sister is about to send her two adult daughters across the country to live in California. When I talk to her, I feel an overwhelming sense of sadness as I know she is bidding farewell to a part of her parenting life. I feel cozy in the idea that I am not there yet, my farewell is still far off. I mean, my kids are only eight and six, I have many more years, right?

That’s what I keep telling myself, anyway.

When Parker was six months old, we moved out of our house for an entire summer and spend it on an Adirondack lake. The summers that followed were spent on the same lake while people rented our house in our little tourist town. In 2015, we bought our RV and summer took a new shape. The inaugural trip was what caused me to start this blog. Every summer thereafter has taken a different traveling path. Some are long trips, some small trips, sometimes we stay with family, friends, or Mike’s teaching assignments take him away from us and I pack the van up for weekend rentals with my two well-trained vagabonds. And we go.

Because we are teachers, we get to have this life. Since I stopped working when we had kids in the summer, I have been able to devote time to them in time to preparing our house for whatever guests we may host. Sometime in February, we start talking about “what we are going to do this summer” and I start to get giddy with the possible plans that will come and the new places we will explore.

When I tell people that we rent our house for weekends all summer long, I am often asked the question, “Well, where will you go?” I love that question, because somewhere in it is the idea that in order to make our home available to others, we must leave it. But that’s the easy part. We must go. And go we do.

This summer, we are not going as far as other summers, but the cumulative nights spent away from our own beds will exceed 30 nights. We will be in guest rooms, on air mattresses, and in the comfort of the RV. But, we will be together.

My children have very little attachment to staying in one place. I mean, they’ve never really had a choice in the matter. I am always in awe of their thirst for adventure. The tradition of our vagabond summer has become a way of life that our family expects of summer time. Sometimes it’s stressful, sometimes it’s rather expensive, but it’s always part of us.

I spent every summer of my first 17 years of life in the house I grew up in. I went on camping trips with friends and neighbors, I got to visit my aunt who had a camp on the Susquehanna River, but, comparatively, I saw none of the beautiful chaos of being on the road that my children see each summer.

You see, where we go is not important. Making money on renting our house is not important (okay, it’s nice) but the ability to experience summer as a vagabond family has become a part of the fabric of who we are. It’s something we probably spent more time and money on than we have decorating the inside of our house or picking out perfect landscaping. It’s become a challenge that we rise to summer after summer.

I’m more than halfway through the 18 summers I will spend with both of my children and in looking back, I’m so grateful for everything we’ve been able to show them. But, I don’t think it’s necessarily the number of states or national parks or beaches or lakes or campgrounds that you show a child, it’s more just the idea that in wherever we go, we are there: together.

I never expected this would be the childhood I would show my children. I never set out to be someone who constantly has a bag packed all through July and August. I never thought I would crave the purity of family travel once the warm weather set in.

But because we go, and we have always gone, I know that some day I will be sitting on the phone with my sister talking about how Parker and Celia are set to move away from us. I know I will have that same feeling of loss and happiness that is so conflicting as a parent.

So, I will take the chaos. I will take the mediocre Airbnb reviews. I will take the heat waves that kill my flowers when I am away. I will take the endless cleaning of my house before I leave. I will take the emotional weight of remembering to pack *all of the things* that everyone needs in one little minivan. I will take the travel crabbiness and the car fighting. And I know what I get from all that is probably worth it’s weight in gold.

We will go. They will remember. And I hope they will seek the same vagabond summers themselves someday.

I’m just crossing my fingers it’s in this time zone. 🤞