I went on vacation with my parents and my four children.

I start by saying that it is absurd that there is no other word for this time spent with our children when they are under 6 years old, and when there is no one to cook for us and clean the house. I propose PIAF (intensive period of accumulation of functions), since the word “vacation” in the dictionary means “relatively long interruption of work, intended for the rest of workers” and this worker had everything but rest.

With the car full, we said goodbye to my husband (who stayed at work), set off heading south and started the PIAF. The room I got was very small and I had to share it with two of my children. The only possible place for the youngest child’s crib was by the door and, consequently, the switch. Every day I woke up at 6:45 am with him turning on the light and opening the door. Two hours of breakfast followed (couldn’t they all wake up at the same time?), and failed attempts to convince the youngest to watch “Bluey” so that I could sleep a few more minutes on the couch.

It was finally time to go to the beach. There I went with those cars that are now in fashion, where you put the children, the towels and the toys. The problem is that to get to the beach we had to climb a slope, which resembled a stage of Everest, pass through an area of houses and walk along a dirt road, and all this with 38º.

On the beach, it was time to smear everyone with sunscreen, always with many protests (the latter were already smeared more with sand than sunscreen, which increased the volume of the protests). I debuted with a sunburn on my back on the first day, which made me pass the remaining six in a t-shirt and get the famous “trucker bronze”. Despite arriving at the end of the afternoon with wrinkles on my hands from so much sunscreen applied, I forgot that I also have a back, and by the way, much whiter than my children’s.

Twenty trips to the bath followed to endure the infernal heat, two hours by the sea to ponder if it was really necessary to get one of the kids from the foam or if he could get away with it, ten castles in the sand that my four-year-old daughter loves to make and the two-year-old loves to destroy, a hundred rounds of uno, ten apologies per minute from people who, carelessly, throw rackets at those who don’t know how to play rackets, and the dramatic passage of the lord of the Berlin Balls who, not content with the amount of sugar in the egg cream, now brings balls with Nutella.

When an hour passed from the time not recommended for the children to be on the beach, we decided to return home. Then, it was time to prepare the lunches of the youngest, put the baby to bed, cook our lunch more calmly (I laughed as I wrote this word), tidy up the house, watch a display of fifty pins of the kids in the pool (that everything they had of pegs should be under water, because on the surface a foot occasionally appeared), another fifty pumps and a few more pools from one side to the other without breathing. All this accompanied by a “Mother! Look!”

After all this, the youngest woke up and we returned to the beach saga. Everything was repeated. It was like this for seven days.

At night, after bathing, picking up the scattered clothes, cooking, giving dinner to everyone, tidying up the kitchen and putting them to bed, I could only fall on the sofa and open the book I was reading and which, curiously, remained on the same page all week.

The interesting thing about all this is that I found myself on the morning of the last day, while we were tidying up the rented house, saying: “next year we have to bring less yogurts”. Next year. I looked at the bracelet that my children bought me with the money they made selling broken shells, and a huge sadness took hold of me. It had gone by so fast.

While we were waiting for the ferry to return, my daughter dropped a toy into the river. After a week like this I could have closed my eyes, I could have told him that this would be the new Christmas of the little fish, I could not think about the pollution. I could, but I set myself up as a super-mom. I took off my overalls, jumped into the water and grabbed the toy while my children cheered me from above. I gave her the toy back hoping for a hug of gratitude, maybe even some pride, but with all the calm in the world she looks at me and says: “So, was the water good?”