Happy Couple Often Go Separate Ways

When Christa Shackleford of Seal Beach takes a vacation, she gets away from it all in a way most wives and mothers never dare. Often as not, she leaves her husband, William, and their three sons at home while she ventures off to explore the world.

Some of their friends think it’s a bit odd that the happily married Shacklefords kiss each other goodby at vacation time. But that doesn’t bother the couple.

“Some of them say, ‘Boy, your husband really must be eager to get rid of you,’ ” said Christa, who has traveled on her own as far as Africa and South America. “I just tell them, I have such a great husband, he doesn’t mind if I have fun.”

“I recommend it,” William says. “It’s good for a couple not to do everything together. They should be free to do their own thing, vacations included. We often go to different ballets, different plays--about half we go to together and half separately. It’s great. No one feels like they’re being dragged along to something they don’t want to go to.”

But, in order to feel comfortable with all that separateness, Christa and William say it’s important to have confidence, in each other and in their marriage.

“We really have a very great relationship,” Christa says. “We’ve been married 25 years.” “She provides the spark that was missing in my life,” William says.

Of course, the family has taken some vacations together. “We went a lot to visit my in-laws in Seattle,” Christa said. “I didn’t enjoy that much.”

Her idea of a dream vacation is the one she took two years ago, a 10-week African safari that included a hike up 19,340-foot Mt. Kilimanjaro, rafting down the Zambesi River (she fell overboard) and a trip through the Okavanga Delta in Botswana in a dugout canoe.

“It’s good to have a happy wife,” William says. “And I enjoy her adventures vicariously.” Let’s back up. Christa was on a vacation alone when she met William. She had hiked to the top of Mt. Whitney alone, but she wanted a picture of herself at the summit so she could prove to her friends at work that she’d made it. William happened along--he’d climbed up from another other direction, and he was happy to oblige with the camera. They talked for awhile, and then “He climbed back down his way and I went back down my way,” she said.

A few days later, however, William was still thinking about the woman he’d met on the mountain, even though he didn’t even know her name. So he went back to the Sierra and climbed back up so he could read her name in the guest register at the summit. “We were married six months later,” Christa said.

When their three sons--now 16, 20 and 23--were small, Christa often took them on backpacking trips by herself because William, an engineer, couldn’t leave his job.

“Once I drove with them all the way up Highway 1 to Seattle, camping all the way. My husband flew up and met me. It wasn’t really very relaxing. We drove across the Golden Gate Bridge, and when we were in the middle of the bridge, it started raining. It rained all the way to Seattle. All we had were those little backpacking tents. We went on all sorts of strange tours of dinosaur country, Coast Guard buildings, just to get out of the rain. It seemed like whenever I went backpacking with the children, it started raining.”

The worst time was when the youngest was only 4, Christa said. “I had to carry practically all the stuff. We didn’t have a tent, just a kind of top I put over us. They kept slipping off into the mud, and I stayed up all night pulling them back in where it was dry. The next morning--it was 13 miles to the car--I told them, ‘Everybody gets $20 if they make it.’ And they all did.”

Her friends thought she was a little strange, then, too, she says. “But it was fun. We were camped by a beautiful lake, and a huge deer with enormous antlers walked right by us on his way to get a drink. It was really great until it started raining.”

Among the vacations the family has taken together were trips to Yellowstone and Grand Canyon National Parks, “places like that,” Christa says. “It rained in Yellowstone, too. And the car pooped out on us. Twice.”

It was William who suggested that Christa take a trip for her 52nd birthday two years ago. “He thought maybe I’d like to go scuba diving or something like that,” she said. Instead, she saw a story in The Times travel section about an off-the-beaten-path African safari, so she sent away for a brochure.

When it arrived, “I told him: ‘this is the trip I’ve always wanted to take. If I could only go on that trip I would be happy forever after.’ ”

So he saw her off at the airport, expecting to pick her up six weeks later. She was a month late. “Our tour guide was the type who’d say, ‘Oh, it’s nice here, let’s just stay a few more days.’ So it ended up being 10 weeks.

“He was frantic. The mail in Africa isn’t very dependable, and I sent him a postcard in August that didn’t get here until next March. He didn’t know what was happening to me, and he was so worried that he started calling embassies all over Africa.”

Finally, Christa was able to get a message to William through a couple that left the tour early: “I (told him I) was going to be late, and send more money. And he did.”

“That was the one time when I got a bit worried, and in some cases, annoyed,” William said. “But in general, I’m glad I gave her that opportunity. It probably cemented the marriage even more.”

“I felt guilty,” she said. “I felt like I was neglecting my family. And I wished they could have come and seen what I was seeing. It didn’t seem fair for me to be having so much fun while my husband was doing all the work. But it was nothing he did to make me feel that way. It just came from within.”

William has his time alone, too. “We have a place in the San Juan Islands (near Seattle), and I go there alone, just to maintain the property, about once a year. Every three years or so, she comes with me.”

Meanwhile, Christa is looking for a job so she can earn money for her next trip. “I’d like to go to Nepal,” she says.

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