Finding Peace Where We Reside
The benefits of staying home for holidays
We have just concluded the winter school holidays here, and as a parent of five children aged 10 and under, I would like to share my thoughts on staying home and the benefits that come with it.
As the school term nears to an end, parents ask other parents, “What are you doing on the holidays?”
My 10-year-old daughter, Jasmine, tells me her friends don’t ask each other this question, but that it is something older people tend to say.
So, what plans did we have?
“Well, we haven’t booked anywhere to stay,” I reply, and I list a few things I hope to do with the kids around the home and locally.
For our family, the end of the first semester, leading into winter is a busy time for us. During the term, after the school bell rings and the kids go home, Ben will have meetings or volleyball training (he is a coach to two teams) or he will have ‘head of department’ things to do. By the time he gets home, it is usually around 5:30pm. After we all have dinner, read scripture, pray, and tidy up, it is time to get the kids ready for bed. There are hot water bottles to be filled, heat packs to be warmed, and many requests to narrate more of the bedtime story I have been composing from thin air. By the time all five kids are tucked into bed, Ben is ready to tuck himself back into the office to do a few more hours of marking or reporting. Weekends often mean his spare minutes are taken up with more marking and reporting at some point also. This is a steady routine for many weeks, so by the time mid-year holidays arrive, we are all ready for spaciousness to breathe, rest, to be together. And for teachers, the mid-year holiday (and the summer break) generally means they don’t have too much work to do while school is out! Hooray!
Adventurous holidays with an itinerary and lovely destinations have their place. These are important! But I intentionally want the family to know how to be together without the drawcard of a special occasion or a booked holiday.
I have often thought about one of the benefits of homeschooling. And that is that the kids get to grow up being with their siblings at home, being each other’s first best friends, creating memories together inside the ordinary narrative of daily routine, with days stretched out with hours upon hours of free time together. Because our kids go to a regular school once they turn five years old, I want to be intentional about carving out space for them to do this on school holidays. The break could very easily be filled up with play dates and organised activities if I allowed it. And although we do accommodate for a few here and there, we choose to limit them. One of the benefits of having five children is they always have someone to play with, and I want to make sure that these relationships are fostered above any other. I want them to like being with each other and I want them to be friends.
One day I want the kids to come home and remember all the secret hideaways they built in the garden together, the games they played in the backyard, the movies they watched and rewatched together, and the wintery views they saw through the frosted glass windows while they read in the warm kitchen.
The choice to stay mostly at home was a coping mechanism at first—me with limited physical capacity by either being pregnant or holding and nourishing a tiny baby with my body. It made it a lot more difficult to always be out doing things, particularly in the early days of learning the ropes with nap times and feed times. I had to simplify. At first, the home felt a bit like a prison, and I felt stuck. But slowly over the years it has turned into a sanctuary. I’ve worked hard in the home to make it feel like this, and of course there is always more to do!
I decided early on that if I was going to be home so much, I needed to make it into a space I loved to be in. This does not happen overnight, particularly with the limitations of being in a season of birthing babies, with one standard income, and no regular help with the kids until they are five and ready to start school. It has been 11 years of homemaking and living, of adding to and organising. Now it is my favourite place to be—here with my family.
Ma dropped around spontaneously over the holidays (my grandmother and the kid’s great grandmother who lives in town). She turned up with sausage rolls and apple teacake from the bakery, hot coffee for us, and crafts for the kids. After everyone quickly demolished the food, she spent hours with the children at our kitchen table helping them make things. If we were always out and busy, there would be no time for such special spur-of-the-moment fun.
Because I have never had any regular help with the small children before they start school, I have relied heavily on school holidays when Ben is home for appointments and also to accomplish the bigger house jobs. Holidays have often quickly filled up for me. We also try and visit Ben’s parents for a few days each school holidays in Brisbane, about an hour and half away. So, holidays, although a reprieve from school, have at times felt like pressure to tick things off of the ever-growing list while I had Ben at home to help with the kids. But now things are settling down as the kids get older and I am no longer in that season of making or sustaining a small baby. I am feeling a lot more on top of the bigger house jobs and appointments now which is a welcome relief.
This winter holidays it has felt like we have crossed a new frontier. We have enjoyed local parks, hikes, a trip to the second-hand bookstore, a visit to the lolly store, and a jaunt to the farm to see grandparents, including their great grandma who lives next door to them. Almost every day we have ventured out somewhere for a few hours somewhere local—one benefit of living in ‘the garden city’ and close to town. We will often see people we know while we are out which is also part of the beauty of living in a smaller city, and one where we have invested into for many years. This is our community. It feels like home in many ways.
Growing up on a farm outside of town with my siblings as friends and cousins as neighbours means I have witnessed firsthand the beauty of a simple childhood where most of my holidays were spent at home or within walking distance. My dad couldn’t leave the farm for long so whatever we did was local. We had one holiday a year where we went to the seaside for three weeks, which we loved. But mostly, our childhoods were made at home on the farm. Now when I visit, the memories flood back. I love going there with my kids. I watch them walk the same tracks I did for the first 21 years of my life before I got married. It is very special. But I also want to make our own tracks, right where we live, here where we reside.
I am aware that as the kids grow older, their borderlines will widen. We will be gently allowing and encouraging them to leave the nest for longer and longer periods of time so they can learn to fly by themselves. One day, God willing, they will create a nest of their own, too.
I am also aware that these are the formative years of parenting for us, and because I often wonder if we are ‘doing it right’, I asked myself some questions. Why do I love staying home for holidays so much? Do we stay home too much? Should we be making an effort to do more, see more, travel further? It was after these self-directed prompts that my thoughts unravelled.
Perhaps this might be an encouragement to you that it’s ok to stay home with your children, letting them have unstructured play time together as siblings, or to explore your local area. What are the special things that are on your doorstep that you can enjoy and make memories out of? We needn’t always go very far at all. But if you are in a special season of travel and adventure, of organised itineraries and new destinations—enjoy that! Whether we are living in days of bringing in the tent pegs or widening them, may we find contentment right where we are.
“Most of what happens within a home unfolds inside the ordinary narrative of the daily routine. Yet later on in life, when one looks back more closely, it is quite incredible how so many of the roots of one’s identity, experience, and presence lead back to that childhood kitchen where so much was happening unknown to itself.
Home is where the heart is. It stands for the sure center where individual life is shaped and from where it journeys forth.”
—John O’Donohue, ‘To Bless the Space Between Us’
With much love and grace,
I write to spur you on towards love and good deeds, or in other words—to be a Beauty Maker.
I have always contemplated the world through a microscopic lens, often trying to find deeper meaning in what I see and experience. I love peeling back the layers and finding the very presence and love of God in it all. That is my treasure. This is what drives what I write.
Your companionship is my biggest encouragement but if you wish to spur me on with other means, I am so grateful!
Such a lovely reminder to be intentional about sibling friendships and to invest in and explore your own town ❤️