Importance of vacation becomes clear when a child's schedule prohibits one

The emails kept pouring in. All spring. Sale fares to Seattle. Half-price stay at Lutsen Resort on the North Shore.

With each, my heart would skip for a moment, and then I would remember: I couldn't go anywhere. Nowhere. Even an overnight to visit my mother-in-law in Albert Lea didn't make sense.

My son was in "Peter Pan" at Children's Theatre and that now controlled our schedules. Six days a week — Mondays are off — from mid-March to late June.

It seemed easy enough when we signed on. "No big deal," I thought. But it was.

I've always known I loved vacations. But I didn't realize how much I needed them until I couldn't take one.

Like so many other families with children committed to sports or the arts, we faced a long stretch with no spring skiing or spring break trip to a beach. No end-of-school-year jaunt to the Boundary Waters or Lutsen. No Mother's Day or Memorial Day weekend in Albert Lea. No quick getaway with friends before the craziness of summer started.

And just as much as the vacations themselves, I've missed planning them, daydreaming about them, counting down the days. Anticipation is a powerful salve. Knowing there's a trip to Mexico in February helps me survive those November days, when the sun sets early and hibernation begins in earnest. And it definitely gets me through frigid January.

I had thought the wanderlust of my youth was gone.

When my then-fiancé and I were driving to the closing of our first house, he was thrilled to be realizing the American dream. Me? I silently cried looking out the car window. No longer could I pack my futon on the top of my car and my bike on the back and head off to a new adventure. I was settling down.

Three houses, two dogs and two kids later, I generally love my settled-down life.

But vacations are the escape from that — my leave from laundry and weeds and planning meals for the workweek. On vacation, I read novels, not news. I easily log 10,000 steps into the Fitbit.

My family re-\connects like we're never quite able to during the months filled with work and school. It's not a battle to get the boys off their screens when we're Up North or in New York. They'll run off and explore the woods or Lake Superior's rocks. They'll beg to see another Broadway show or explore Times Square.

When the boys were babies, a friend told me about the milestones her kids always reached while on vacation. For us it was the same. Jordy really began toddling on that trip to Rehoboth Beach, Del., when he was 1. Ryan realized that the "Starry Night" painting he'd learned about in school was real when he saw it at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. During a trip to Washington, D.C., when he was 9 years old, he became obsessed with presidents and American history. That obsession continues nearly three years later. Now he's angling for a trip to Boston and Philadelphia.

As an adult, I'm no longer hitting milestones, but vacations are when my curiosity bubbles up. I knew little about the plight of Irish revolutionaries until visiting Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin, where many were executed by the British. I didn't understand how movies are largely made today — in front of green screens where the background can change with the push of button — until we visited a few Hollywood studios.

We try to balance our vacations now according to these goals: learning, relaxing, reconnecting — with each other and with our friends and family.

We have one more week of being stuck. The boys' weekday theater camp limits big vacations for another month, but our weekends are ours again.

Lakes are calling. So is my mother-in-law. I can't wait.

Karen Lundegaard • 612-673-4151