When my oldest son was a toddler, he was enchanted both by commercials for sugary cereals and by the rare times he had a taste of these longed for items at a friend’s house. They were strictly on the forbidden list in our house, one of those foods that those of us who used “Feed Me, I’m Yours” as a homemade baby food bible, would never allow.

But on one memorable trek to see grandparents, there was an entire package of little boxes of those coveted, sweet treats. I knew that once he saw them and knew they were intended for him, that I had lost the battle and so I told him that it was okay to have them (in a measured way!) because they were “vacation cereals.”

Jason promptly turned that into his own code for anytime we traveled anywhere. “Vi-cation” meant that Sugar Pops or Sugar Smacks or Frosted Flakes etc. were on the menu for him. I might have been pretty vigilant about his foods but on these occasions, well, I folded.

We spent the last week on vacation and I thought, more than once, about Jason’s beloved “vi-cation” treats. “Vi-cation” has come to be my mental shorthand for doing those things we don’t normally do, for being open to and ready for new experiences.

Some of these last week were simple and silly ones—waiting for the historic carousel to open for the day and thoughtfully selecting which “up and down” animal I wanted to ride. Some of these were more “why not” as we traversed the walkways close to Niagara Falls and got soaked. Others were just the opportunity to say “let’s try this” to an experience we might normally not even notice, to, as my dear friend says, “turn left” just to turn left.

As adults with careers and families and responsibilities, our shoulders often sag with the weight of all that we carry. And though it is almost impossible to get away from all of it, these moments of “vi-cation,” when we allow ourselves the freedom and joy of more moments that are driven by desire and less by expectations, we can and do reset and fill our full hearts.