VACATIONING TOGETHERNESS

When you vacation together and stay in one house or condo, you really learn lots of things about the people you’re with (sometimes more than you want to know and vise versa). This time I’m finding out things about my daughters that surprise me.

Brenda, for instance, has never liked exercising (who does?). But this trip, in spite of the fact that she hasn’t really felt good because she is fighting off some kind of virus, she has gone out every morning and run and walked these mountains. And this morning, probably because she has stuck with it, she feels better. So I have learned that she has a determination that I didn’t realize she had.

Ashley has also surprised me in a good way. She has always been the messiest one in the family and even though she is an excellent cook, in the past she has not been as good about cleaning the kitchen afterwards. It’s like she expended all her energies on the meal and it stopped there.

I take back everything I ever said about her messiness. She makes her bed every day, cooks the meals when we eat in, and is continually cleaning the kitchen. She’s also kept up with washing the clothes. This morning she was filling the dishwasher and wiping down the counter tops yet again. I said, “Ashley, are you cleaning the kitchen again?”

She answered that she was. And I said, “You’re making me feel guilty!”

Here was her reply: “Now we’re even!”