Opportunities for family vacations for the summer of 2002 are now over. Recently I overheard a mother lament that their plans for a family vacation out West didn’t work out. With a son now heading off to college, opportunities for her entire family to vacation together are mostly gone, but not totally.

On the same day I heard a grandfather share with joy how much he and his wife had enjoyed being with their children and grandchildren at the beach for a week, all 15 of them.

“I never knew kids could eat so much,” he said.

When I acknowledged how much he seemed to enjoy the trip, he said with good humor that he’d know just how much he enjoyed it when the bills came due. But he’d be the first to admit that the money spent on the trip was one of his best investments of the year.

Having returned recently from a family vacation in San Francisco, I’ve read with interest Bill Keane’s comic strip, “The Family Circus.” The children of this comic strip, Jeffy, Dolly, Billy, and P.J, along with their parents, have been shown enjoying many of the traditional sites in the foggy, windy city on the bay: Alcatraz, Fisherman’s Wharf, Chinatown, the cable cars, and more. On July 22, Keane introduced the strip as a “memorable past vacation the family enjoyed in The Golden Gate City.”

After returning home, my wife and I sat and watched the video of our trip to this beautiful city. The video burned the moments we spent as a family deeper into our minds. As I watched, I gave God thanks for such times of relaxation and play with my family. I know the sun will soon be setting on these kinds of opportunities.

My mind raced through many vacations my sister and I enjoyed with our parents through the years. Dad’s 1972 Chevrolet pickup with an overhang camper carried us from the mountains to the ocean and many places in between.

I know our group of four must have seemed like a family circus at times to my parents, like the time the truck broke down on the way to Disney World, when the dog bit me in West Palm Beach, when we felt threatened by a group of men outside Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati after a Reds game, when the money saved for the trips ran out more quickly than expected.

But as I followed the vacation of “The Family Circus” in San Francisco and reflected on my own, I was reminded that some of the fondest memories of family life, some of the funniest events that occur within families, and some of the most carefree days of life occur during family vacations. My parents had the wisdom to know this and planned each year to give us experiences that helped shape our concept of family while experiencing some of the sites of this beautiful land, bringing joy and excitement to our lives.

There’s really a small window of time to make vacation memories with families. I have been guilty in past years of finding reasons why family vacations just were not practical. At other times I have been away physically but never allowed myself to leave emotionally, both signs of a workaholic. But this year was different.

Having reaped the rewards of this trip, I’ve repented in time to make plans for a few more of these family times before I send my boys off into the world. It’s only in comic strips like “The Family Circus” that children are forever young. But one thing my family now shares in common with Jeffy, Dolly, Billy, P.J, and their parents is that we can return to San Francisco any time we wish because our trip is now a memorable past vacation in our family’s life.



The Rev. Michael Helms is pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in Moultrie.