RIVER CITY JOURNAL: IT'S VACATION SEASON, SO GET READY FOR THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE

Tell your children you're just going to the mall. By the time you reach Yellowstone, they'll get the knack of it.

This year's vacation season should be a time of anticipation, excitement, relaxation, exploration and serendipity.

But I can't tell you how many times I've already heard something like this: Whew! Am I ever glad to get back to work so I can recover from my vacation!

These words are spoken mostly by harried parents who lead harried lives and take harried vacations with harried children and wonder why they feel so, well, you know, harried.

And what parents aren't harried these days?

Just imagine: It isn't even summer yet.

I can tell you that it bothers me more than a little to hear parents describe a harrowing trip with their children -- the sort of marathon where you try to cram a month of travel and sightseeing into five measly days off from work.

Folks, that's not a vacation. That is a calculated descent into the netherworld of the damned.

Not that I'm an expert on vacations. But I've never taken one I didn't like, as long as you don't count that three-day excursion to Colorado without any motel reservations when we wound up driving across half of Colorado and all of Kansas just to find a place to sleep -- at home. Officially, that wasn't a vacation. It was mistake, a blunder, the kind of error parents sometimes make when they are harried and think they can do two weeks in three days. It happens.

When I was growing up in the Ozark hills west of here, we took exactly one family vacation. It was 1953, and I guess the milk cow, Lulu, must have died. Anyway, we were gone for three weeks. Three weeks! All at one time. And what a grand adventure it was.

We drove past the cotton fields of the Bootheel and on to Nashville where we saw the Grand Ol' Opry in the old church-theater. I'll never forget watching the performers I'd heard on the radio. The best part was eating peanuts and throwing the shells on the floor. Then we went across the Great Smoky Mountains to Ashville, N.C., at the height of strawberry season to see friends who raised strawberries. Next it was Washington, D.C., and then past New York City and on to Niagara Falls and into Canada, which is a foreign country, you know. We went to Detroit and saw the Ford museum and the City of Tomorrow exhibit, very little of which has actually come to pass. I saw my first pizza in Detroit, but I didn't taste it. Like so many children of that era, I was on a strict hamburger-or-tomato-soup diet. Picky? No, but highly selective. Somewhere in the middle of all this we visited friends of my stepfather's who were the parents of Marlene Dietrich's son-in-law. Or maybe it was ex-son-in-law. Got that straight? And then to the Windy City, back across Illinois and home at last in the Ozark hills with a new milk cow.

Now that was a vacation.

When our sons were young, we made a point of going on an annual family vacation in June or July. Our first real family vacation, other than visiting relatives, was to the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. What a blast we had traveling -- and getting lost -- on old mining roads. Who will ever forget the sign with the missing letter pointing to Boreas Pass? Over the years we went to oceans, deserts, islands and historic cities.

I wouldn't take a million dollars for any of those vacations. If I could talk our grown sons into it, I'd do it all over again.

But our sons make their own travel plans nowadays, and we make our annual excursion to the Oregon Coast, a favorite spot we've been going to since 1972. Our sons go to Egypt and China and Africa and South America, where our younger son is right now.

The memories and experiences of those vacations can never be replaced. Did we come back tired? Maybe we were exhausted with exhilaration, but we would have gladly packed up for another two weeks at the drop of a suitcase.

One of the rare longings I harbor is the desire to have a real family vacation again. All of us. But I know this isn't likely to happen. I must rely on the stories we tell each other -- and bore our friends with -- to keep the vacation spark alive.

Whenever I hear parents talk about their vacations with their children in less than happy terms, I am reminded of a radio commercial Paul Harvey did a few years ago for one of the big, nationwide flower-delivery companies.

In the commercial, Mr. Harvey was urging his listeners to call this company and send flowers to their mothers for Mother's Day. He recalled his dear, sweet mother and how she loved flowers. The commercial ended something like this:

"So pick up the telephone RIGHT NOW and send some flowers to your mother."

A long, dramatic Paul Harvey pause.

"I wish I could."

I cried the first time I heard that commercial, grieving for all those who couldn't send flowers to their mothers who had passed on. I still get a lump in my throat when I think about it.

Vacations? Take a trip with your children. Go someplace you like or have always wanted to see. Find things to do with your sons and daughters before they grow up and make their own plans and live their own lives. Make some memories.

I wish I could.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.