Want more time out than the annual summer holiday? Catherine Galway and her family took a six-month trip - and utterly changed their view of life. She explains how it happened.
You know how it is. You book your family sun holiday to escape, unwind and, if the children leave you alone long enough, maybe even read a book.
The days are warm and long and of an evening, kids in-bed, you and your partner sit on the balcony listening to crickets, drinking ice-cool G&T. Perhaps, like me, you have those wonderful, full adult conversations.
The kind where you toss around all the things you'd love to do, all the new careers you'd love to take up and all the dreams you'd love to chase.
Then, perhaps like me, you return home, fight with the washing, drag your heels into work and enter the "real world" once again. The sun on your skin is a warm memory. Life isn't a holiday.
About 18 months ago I returned from one such trip and was struck by just how much that trip and that talk had become a pattern too. What was it all about? My dreams popping out for an airing then popping back (where they belonged?) again.
So, one night, I decided to hit my husband Maurice with that all-terrifying question of our times and our generation . . . the "what where why?" question. What are we doing? Where are we going with our lives? Why do we get up every day, running like mice on a wheel with work-school-dinner-bed in ever decreasing circles and cycles? Why?
It seemed out of place. There was no G&T and no balcony. Just the rain on the Velux above our bed in our Killarney home. But this time we heard it. We heard the questions and we heard ourselves.
This time, we saw the giant mouse-wheel itself and shuddered. I don't know why; why then. But we did.
A few more conversations followed.
We had no money to speak of. No rich relatives who might want to help a Gauguin-esque request. But we did have a house. And we had talked about changing that. So, in a matter of weeks, we had approached the bank with our proposal.
We wanted to re-mortgage. Sell up, rebuild and in amid all that, take six months out, travel the world and put the tab on the mortgage.
We have a wonderful bank. To my amazement, the figures actually tallied for once and the bank said yes! And both our employers were supportive in letting us take an extended, unpaid break.
On November 21st 2005, to a huge gathering of goodbying neighbours, myself, Maurice and our three boys - Gabriel (nine), Rí (six) and Archie (four) - left home and headed out into the world. Our route was London-San Francisco-overland to LA and Disneyland-Hawaii-Tahiti-Cook Islands-Fiji-New Zealand-Australia-Singapore-London-Home.
Six months of it.
Breezing through the Pacific we managed to miss the winter in Ireland. The last weekend before Christmas we stood humble and watery-eyed as we fell for the magic that was the Disneyland Christmas Parade. On St Stephen's Day we ate giant leftover turkey legs on a beautiful lagoon beach in Oahu. As 2006 came near we woke our sleeping children from their beds, walked to Waikiki Beach and cheered fireworks exploding over the water.
We spent three months amid the Polynesian people and their islands and, with so many wonderful memories, it's hard to pick out highlights. But our lovely house in Titikaveka on Raratonga in the Cook Islands was heaven. I wrote, the boys snorkelled and Maurice took on the Professional Association of Diving Instructors course.
Face to face with sharks and exploring another world, he was captivated. For me it was a haven where we could unpack for a spell and the home education could catch up with itself.
Another highlight was Kuata in the Yasawa islands where Maurice was made chief and our eldest son won himself a reef snorkelling trip. Twenty-five minutes out to sea with no land in sight, Gabriel jumped from the boat and watched coral reefs fall away into bottomless blueness. (Later, at home in school for Father's Day, he wrote a poem about it and was hailed best in the class.)
With two months in New Zealand we have no doubts about our highlight there. Ten days on the farm of a stranger in Taihape made us a dear, dear new friend and my children ate barbecued fresh venison and goat sausages! We were taken into a community and even joined the team in their 24-hour Relay for Life fundraiser for cancer.
Our trip saw us living and breathing each other for six months, all day, every day. My husband redefined his relationship with our youngest and taught him to swim. Our children learned to appreciate one another and what each had to contribute to the other's life. As for me, I fell in love all over again with my husband and my children.
Two weeks before we came home, Gabriel and I stood watching a sunset in Australia. He turned to me with his full nine years upon him and said, "Mum, it'll be strange to be home again. Before we left, home was normal, but this is normal now."
And it had become so. To be together, to move through days and weeks and months slowly together, to share all our joys had become normal.
How would we readjust to home again? As I write this, we have been home three months. I am sitting on our patio and can hear the children playing and my husband strimmering our untamed wilderness of a garden. I know I am still struggling with our return.
But I see things differently now. Myself and my husband are both back to work: I as a youth worker, he as artistic director of the Co Kerry arts organisation Samhlaíocht. And the boys returned to school.
But each of us struggles still with our new ideas of normal. We wanted to review our lives and knew we couldn't do that while we were at home. The time out allowed us to see things from a distance.
The southern hemisphere shows a different night sky. The Southern Cross replaces the Plough. And for us, all was changed utterly too. Our world as we knew it span and we reeled in delight with it.
I encourage everyone to chase their dream. We did it. Our lives are changed because of it. Both of us are looking for new careers. I am intending to train as an interior designer and combine this with writing. And, eventually, we will get there. We know we will. But, of it all, we had that time.
As my brother tells me, "No one can change that. You had that time."
We did. And what's more, anyone can. The doing it is easy, it's the thinking about it that's hard.