ut I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to Christmas Eve. After our dinner for 12 (Ethan made pork ragu in the slow cooker, and I passed the dessert torch on to our older daughter, whose chocolate chip cookies are our family’s best hope for future wealth), the kids headed upstairs, archly requesting a decent night’s sleep. Ethan and I took our time wrapping a couple of small gifts, then curled up and watched a movie together, still making it to bed before midnight. I woke up nervous that the kids would feel cheated by the fact that there was so little under the tree. Turned out, when we came downstairs, the cats—as if accessories to our Christmas plan— had created a distraction by shredding the wrapping paper off most of the gifts. The kids didn’t even seem to notice that their haul was significantly smaller than usual and that it consisted mostly of basics, like mittens, socks, and books. When there were no more boxes to open, my husband handed a slip of paper to the kids. It was a rhyming clue—the first of eight leading to our big reveal. The hunt took us, as a family, through the house, from attic to basement, clue to clue, and finally brought us to the driveway. Opening the door to our minivan, the kids found a small white box buckled into the middle seat. Inside was a scrapbook revealing, in photos and words, the trip that we would embark on the next day. Our youngest, once she realized what was happening, said with utter delight, “It’s like those commercials where they get a surprise trip to Disney World, but better!” And our two older kids were just as excited, even though they’re in the throes of adolescence, a zone naturally pillared by resentment and boredom. Next, we gave each kid a certificate for his or her own “experience gift”: a culinary tour of Charleston for Louisa; a Savannah ghost tour via hearse (!) for Simon; and a horseback ride through a nature preserve on Hilton Head for animallover Frankie. I also surprised my husband with a reservation for zip-lining, which quickly became the most hotly anticipated event of the week.
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We packed Christmas Day, went to my mom’s house for Christmas dinner, then came home and argued about whether we should undecorate the tree and drag it to the curb before we headed out of town. My husband worried about the fire hazard of leaving a dry tree in an empty house; I worried the naked tree would be an invitation to burglars. Laziness prevailed! e left the next morning at dawn. The drive to Charleston should have taken 12 hours. With traffic, it took us 19, which included six movies, one lengthy audiobook (All the Light We Cannot See), lunch at a Panera near Quantico, and dinner at Prime Smokehouse, in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. This was a barbecue joint we found on Yelp, and it provided our favorite meal of the entire trip. (When the waitress brought over an unsolicited refill of sweet tea, our 14-year-old said, “It’s weird how people here are so nice.”) From there, our adventure unfolded as all family vacations do— or at least all my family vacations: equal parts “Why are my kids so annoying?” and “I truly adore these people.” Some days I felt like the mom in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (frazzled, longsuffering); others, like Carol Brady (amiable, relaxed to the point of seeming medicated). A few highlights: strolling along the Battery in Charleston, then visiting the Calhoun Mansion, a museum in the largest private home in the city. Hearing Gullah spoken for the first time and gorging on fried chicken at Leon’s Fine Poultry & Oyster Shop, a former auto-body joint that still has its original garage doors. On Hilton Head, we went night swimming, rode bikes on the beach, and ate “oooey-gooey” sand-
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wiches at a tucked-away treasure called the Lowcountry Produce Market & Café. (For the uninitiated: This delicacy consists of grilled pimiento cheese, bacon, and garlic pepper jelly on plain old white bread.) In Savannah, we waited on an hourlong line for Leopold’s famous ice cream and were so richly rewarded that we considered waiting another hour for seconds. We visited Malaprop’s Bookstore/Cafe, in Asheville (a vast, cozy mecca for bookworms), strolled through the galleries in the River Arts District, and capped off the first day of 2016 with a candlelit tour of the Biltmore Estate, the Vanderbilts’ country cottage, which has 250 rooms and 43 bathrooms. (You know, as country cottages do.) In Washington, D.C., we rested our feet on our friends’ coffee table and regaled them with travel tales. Then the kids jumped on the trampoline while the adults drank wine. Personally, I hate hearing about other people’s idyllic vacations (the only thing worse is listening to someone else’s dream), so let me assure you: We had plenty of tense moments. Our kids pinched one another and feuded in the backseat. My husband and I got into a heated argument in the parking lot at South of the Border—the world’s most overrated megamall/pit stop. (If there’s a couple who hasn’t gotten into a heated argument in the parking lot at South of the Border, I would like to meet them!) The ghost tour backfired: Afterward, certain members of our family needed to sleep with the lights on, and other members of our family were not as sympathetic as they could have been. As for the much anticipated
