My sister has sent me an e-mail on vacations. Along with her cheery encouragement comes an attachment, a story about the necessity of getting away to unplug, unwind and undo the stresses that torment our daily lives.

I chuckle.

This is a woman known for her extravagant vacations. When a few free days (or weeks) come her way, she exits town faster than you can set the house alarm and lock the front door. She has hiked Europe, toasted the New Year in Australia, drunk ouzo in Greece and savored unpronounceable delicacies in Korea during the World Cup.

Her friends are proof that birds of a feather travel together. They have met her in the rain forest of Costa Rica and in the grand avenues of Buenos Aires. She has had dinner with her boyfriend in Istanbul. Every couple of years or so, her law school classmates organize impromptu reunions in cities around the country. I'm sure she's among the first to RSVP.

I'm also quite certain that they have no children. Or, if they do, they have circumstantial amnesia.

For me, spending a couple of nights away from home is a luxury to be relished as much for its rarity as for its change of pace. Not that I don't snatch every single vacation hour due me. Of course I do. But I stay mostly at home, escaping, if I'm lucky, for only a day or two. That's not nearly enough time to click my internal refresh button.

Taking time off from work is not the same as a vacation. Because when I stay home, I catch up on my second job. I ferry kids to doctors and dentists, wait for repairmen, clean out cabinets and sort through closets.

A true vacation, on the other hand, requires packing more than an overnight bag. It demands a change in attitude, a change in latitudes. A week in the Canadian Rockies would be nice, for example, and two weeks on a Mediterranean cruise bliss. Yet . . . yet . . .

It's not that I'm scared of boats or planes or trains. I actually like the exotic because it offers a sweet contrast to a life that is so very mundane. I fear, however, how mice will play when the cat's away.

After planning five days in New York for an anniversary trip, we decided to call it off at the last minute when I couldn't find anyone to supervise the three teenagers at home. Their assurances that they would behave only served to make my husband anxious, and nightmares of wild parties in the living room wreaked havoc with my sleep. Broadway would have to wait -- as would Chicago, the Caribbean and the tour of Scandinavian ports planned by friends.

Lately, though, I've been talking about how, once the last child is out of the house -- three years and counting -- we can spend a month, a whole, luxurious month, in Spain. Rent a place in Barcelona near my paternal cousins, drive a teeny European two-seater down to Sitges where my mother was born and her family still lives, then head for my grandfather's village to see if the almond groves have survived urbanization.

How about a trek up the Pyrenees, I suggest to hubby, perhaps Andorra and the south of France? Oh, how romantic.

I feel my wanderlust expand to encompass the entire European continent. Sigh. Then my son walks in with a traffic ticket he swears, by golly, he should never ever have received.

Is it too late to develop circumstantial amnesia?

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