Then my daughter offered to rent a second house, and I exhaled. Now it felt like a vacation that could bring us together without tromping on top of each other. Of course it is no one's fault but our own that we have so very, very many children, but we forgot to factor in the doubling effect, and there are not even any grandchildren. Besides they started out considerably smaller. 

Family vacations entail baggage, and I am not talking carry ons. Grown up kids are less malleable about diet, and more opinionated about elbow room. We did smash eight of us in a tent at Yosemite without too much angst back in the 90's, until the bears joined us. That trip we were on the road less than ten minutes when someone sneezed, and asked for a handkerchief. I had none. Handing her a receipt to wipe her nose, I tried to console my feelings of ineptness by counting how many things I had managed to remember. Let's see, for each child I had stowed ten items per day: shirt, pants, undies or diapers, two socks, two shoes, pj tops and bottoms and a sweater. Multiply by five kids and seven days and I was definitely amazing. But no tissues.  In that era I could preselect a week's worth of food without consulting anyone. And they ate it. But now that the majority are old enough to vote my dictatorship has ended. The last time we rented a cabin, maybe seven years ago, one of our kids offered to make sushi. As in seaweed. My menus for twenty years were never more avant-garde than beans and cheese, pasta and cheese, crust and cheese. No one will mention cooking at my funeral. 

So our kids are booking flights and getting time off work. In eighty days they will choose bathing suits and sunglasses, and I will pack for no one but myself.