Same Place, Next Year

Most everything that mattered in Andy Thomas’s boyhood happened during his family’s annual holiday in the same Welsh village along the Irish Sea.

In Holyhead, he learned to sail and later, to drive. He had his first romances there and more adventures exploring the familiar bluffs and cliffs with his cousins than he can count. “We knew every rock and beach,” Thomas said. There were sailing races and regattas, fishing expeditions followed by huge seafood feasts in big drafty houses and long rainy nights spent playing cards.

“All of my childhood fantasies and memories come from those summers. We looked forward to it all year long,” said Thomas, who was raised in London, but is now a Chicago-based marketing executive. The father of four daughters, he laments that his family can’t return to Wales every summer as his siblings still do.

But even if he could, his wife Rosemary wouldn’t go for the idea. The one vacation the Thomases spent in Wales was a disaster, he concedes, with unrelenting cold and rain that lasted a week, coupled with the effort it took to keep the family fed, clothed and entertained in unfamiliar environs. “Rose is in no hurry to go back,” Thomas said, laughing. “But those summers weren’t just about a place. They were about connections and rites of passage. There were a lot of rituals, starting with the long car ride to get there. I wish I could find something like that so my kids would have that same kind of experience.”

These days, many families are looking to forge exactly those kinds of connections and inspire similar emotions by returning again and again to the same vacation spot, whether a Southwestern dude ranch, a cottage on Cape Cod or a favorite California ski resort.

“When communities are so much in flux, it’s reassuring to kids to find someplace that doesn’t change much. It’s comforting and it’s safe,” said UCLA child psychologist Jill Waterman.

“Especially for younger kids, returning to the same place eases the transition between home and a new place,” Waterman said. “And for older kids in the process of separating from the family, it brings everyone together.”

Such trips help kids preserve good feelings about family times, she said, noting that her own sons wouldn’t miss their annual August week at UCLA’s family camp.

There’s another reason, though, families like to return to familiar haunts: It’s easier on everyone. Parents know what to expect, as do the kids. Nancy Burkey’s two kids have been to ski school so often at Jackson, Wyo., that they’re greeted as old friends each season when they return, the Sebastopol, Calif., physician said.

My kids talk all winter about the fish they’re going to catch up at Ludlow’s Island in Minnesota, where we’ve vacationed since they were babies. I get that “You must be crazy!” look if I so much as suggest we might consider another spot somewhere else.

Burkey acknowledges she, too, is ready to try a new mountain, but the comfort of the children has so far lured Burkey and her husband back to Wyoming. They can discuss in advance the runs they’ll take and the instructors they’ll see. Waterman suggests parents be ready to let go of a place when the kids outgrow it. But be careful not to do that too soon.

Sue Brunner learned that lesson the hard way. After several years of heading to the same Wisconsin condo for a week, she and her family decided to vacation in northern Michigan instead. The place was nicer, the pools better, but the kids didn’t care. They missed Wisconsin. They missed the bowling alley and the restaurant where they bought pie. They missed the French fries at a certain deli and the corn.

“It’s those little details,” said Brunner, an attorney who practices in Chicago. “They didn’t like the new place because it wasn’t the old place. They spent hours debating the merits of Wisconsin and Michigan corn. I thought they’d think it was fun to find something new, but what mattered to them was the familiarity. Kids hang on to all of that.”

For my kids, that means earnest discussions about where they can find frogs or the best place in the lake to catch a fish. As soon as we arrive, they’ll beg to head across the lake to the resort that sells penny candy and then, clutching their choice, they’ll want to sit on the porch and hear the same old family stories they’ve heard a dozen times before. The next day, they’ll meet up with kids they’ve made friends with before.

Sure, adults might get a little bored by the predictability of it all. But that’s the trade-off for developing the kids’ sense of belonging at one place, believes Don Wertlieb, who chairs Tufts University’s child studies department and vacations every year with his family on Martha’s Vineyard.

Besides, he says, “When you don’t have to exert a lot of energy finding your way around a new place, it’s a lot easier to relax.”

*

Taking the Kids appears weekly.