Aisha Sultan | Post-Dispatch

Columnist and features writer

When our children were young, many of our vacations involved piling into our Prius and driving 750 miles to visit my family in Texas. Our fancier trips took us to theme parks or beaches in Florida or national parks in the West.

I didn’t grow up in a family that took vacations — not the week-long, getaway kind. There were too many of us, my parents worked all the time, and I’m sure they couldn’t afford it. But we had the endless days of summer with our cousins, hanging out at the pool and making our own neighborhood adventures. We walked to the nearby grocery store, attempted to make homemade pizza, rode our bikes for miles and picked wild blackberries.

Our imaginations made going nowhere special feel special.

When we had child

See Full Page