Front Porch: This vacation wasn’t exactly built for two

I would like to take a moment to defend my vacation style. I didn’t think I needed to, but apparently I do.

With any luck, I will have just returned from nearly three weeks of vacation (I wrote this before I left), visiting family and friends in Florida. I went by myself, as I did last year, though this year one of my sons came along on the last week of the trip. My husband remained in Spokane working. Our family joke is that he stays to earn the money; I go to spend it. Works for me.

But this seems to cause some distress among our acquaintances. What I find myself being asked is how could he let me go alone? Please envision me bristling at the word “let,” though I think the question has more to do with safety concerns than anything else, since I travel around from city to city while I’m gone. The other thing I hear is that since I have a perfectly lovely husband to travel with, which I should be grateful for (and I am), why go without him?

We simply have different vacation styles, that’s all. I’m fine with being gone at length. He prefers shorter trips, more like long weekends, and so that’s what we do together – up to Canada, over to the Oregon coast, a whirlwind four days in Boston for a friend’s wedding, quick trips like that. Sure, we did go together to visit our son who lives overseas, and we had a great time. I expect we’ll do that again.

Father and son took a trip together to Madagascar a few years back. I stayed home. Frankly, where they went and what they did was more physically challenging than I would have been able to handle comfortably, and I sure didn’t want to slow them down. It was a guys’ trip, and they most definitely enjoyed themselves. I was really and truly happy for what they got to do together. Besides, I didn’t have to take any of that nasty malaria medicine.

Also, this is the busy time of year in my husband’s business, so it’s not a convenient time for him to travel. And he’d rather stick a needle in his eye than go from living room to living room to chat with people he barely knows and whose names he has trouble keeping straight. Now if everyone could be sailing or snorkeling or bike riding or doing at least something mildly physical amidst all that conversation, it would be less painful for him. Vacations aren’t supposed to be painful.

As to the safety concern, well, it’s not like I headed unprepared to the far reaches of an unexplored land. Sure, something could happen – just as it could happen when I drive by myself to Seattle – but in Florida I’m visiting people who care about me and would care for me should something untoward occur. I know my way around the state pretty well, only drive during the daytime and never pick up chain-saw-wielding hitchhikers. And should I fall ill – please trust me on this – Florida is nicely set up to handle most any medical emergency that can befall a senior citizen.

Now, if I made this trip in the winter, when my husband has more free time, and I told him I’d really like for him to go with me, good guy that he is, he’d accompany me. He’d be charming and conversational and perfectly presentable. But I know he’d be having a lousy time, and that would weigh on me. We both have a much better time this way – me on the road in Florida and him at home. I enjoy myself and don’t worry about his discomfort. Besides, I left the refrigerator filled with food he can just nibble on (his preferred style when on his own), and he was free to watch whatever he wanted to on TV at night.

Of course we make travel compromises, just as we’ve compromised on other things over the years. Not every trip we’ve taken together has been of equal interest to us both. There was that time in New York City and that other time drenched and without provisions in a rain forest. But we really do try to do together those things which we both enjoy. And some things we just do separately. I’m surprised that this seems so peculiar to others.

Bruce and I may be a married couple of 40-plus years, but we’re not fused at the hip. We don’t feel compelled to take our show out on the road together. We spend a lot of really great time, just the two of us, right here at home in Spokane.