By Noma Faingold  

During the 17 years I was married, I was required to participate in way too many family vacations. In retrospect, they were not vacations at all.  

My memories are vivid. Let me take you there. 

I joined a family really into staging large reunions, where everything had to be documented with snapshots – in front of bodies of water, sitting around a massive table at restaurants (“Everybody, stop eating for a second!”) and posing in front of mountain ranges.  

I was not used to this. When my family went on a road trip through the Southwest, my mother collected postcards and subsequently put them in an album. I do recall that my older brother mocked the frequency of me getting car sick by referring to my side-of-the-road deposits as “landmarks.” 

With my in-laws and 17 members of their family, I remember one particularly cringe-worthy photo session with a hired professional on a beach in Fort Lauderdale. We were required to wear custom commemorative T-shirts to memorialize the occasion, which was my ex-husband’s grandfather’s 90^th birthday. Or does it matter if it was his 85^th?  

The front of the white tee had a larger-than-life portrait of his grandfather wearing a Chicago Cubs hat. I think we even had to pay for them. This trip was before the Cubs won its first World Series in 2016, which meant that grandpa was one of those long-suffering Cubs fans, who would not see his hometown team win a world championship in his lifetime. Pity. 

Who chose Fort Lauderdale, anyway?  

After landing, we rented a car. On the way to the “resort,” I was struck by the many partially built and abandoned commercial developments we drove past. Maybe they were collateral damage from the 2008 real estate crash. 

When we checked into the high-rise hotel with all the 1970s architectural charm of poured concrete, family members were already gathering in the beige-on-beige lobby with underwater art on the walls, wearing their T-shirts. We were handed ours, as if they were welcoming leis. 

Damn, the photo shoot was imminent. 

The professional photographer was already there, patiently waiting for the chaos to die down of the children running back and forth from a lounge area to the outside beachfront. I lost track of how many times they activated the automatic glass doors. It seemed to thrill the front desk staff. 

We dropped off our luggage in our unremarkable room. The amenities were so generic, I had no desire to take the complimentary mini-soap, shampoo and conditioner home. 

I quickly put on shorts and the T-shirt, not bothering to glance in the mirror. I really didn’t want to know how it looked. The outfit would not even have been flattering on Charlize Theron. And I already had accepted that the humidity would inevitably wreak havoc on my wavy hair. 

It had already been decided that the location would be the beach, with the ocean as the backdrop. Everyone was ready, almost giddy. I stayed pretty quiet. It was best I not share my thoughts as we walked across the hot sand.  

Mercifully, the shoot didn’t last long, even with the four fidgety, hard-to-control children under age eight mugging for the camera. 

Getting my picture taken was not an activity I looked forward to. I have never photobombed anyone. I had not yet perfected a fake smile. Being inauthentic goes against my principles. My former mother-in-law, on the other hand, could really turn it on for the camera, no matter how foul a mood she was in. Every time.  

To coax a genuine smile out of me, she would whisper, “Dino” (my pet at the time), in my ear. She knew my unconditional love of dogs would bring a hint of joy to my face. 

I couldn’t wait to take off the T-shirt, never to be worn again. As a matter of fact, at the end of the trip, I may have inadvertently left the T-shirt behind in the hotel room. 

A cousin of my then-husband had brought his girlfriend on the trip and insisted she be part of the family portrait. When they broke up a few months later, the cousin’s father asked my ex if she could be “Photoshopped out.” 

I wonder if that family wanted to erase me the same way after my divorce.  

Photo day wasn’t the worst part of that trip. Nor was a visit to the swap meet at the fairgrounds, which I would describe as surreal and dispiriting. The scene was the opposite of eye candy. I found myself overwhelmed by row after row of knock-off sunglasses, knock-off designer handbags, flowy tie-dye skirts, loud island-themed men’s short-sleeve shirts and snack food like deep-fried Milky Way bars, a cooking preparation that should be outlawed. 

No more enjoyable were the celebratory family dinners, featuring surf-and-turf, followed by platitude-laden speeches. It felt like being on a cruise ship. The only escape was overboard.  

Still, the worst was a day-long excursion to Disney World, which seems like a slightly more wholesome version of Las Vegas, with its overdose of Americana and the unrelenting pursuit of bringing fantasy to life. Both destinations feel like not-so-subtle money grabs. For instance, as soon as you exit a ride, like the “Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith,” you step into a shop with tons of merchandise, from Aerosmith apparel to Mickey Mouse plushy toys.  

It’s a good thing I bought a refrigerator magnet. Here’s why. 

The attraction that did me in was some kind of space travel simulator. It looked a little like a movie theater (with a large screen) but the floor had a strange side tilt. My then-husband, who was excited, sat on to my left and my father-in-law, who eagerly went along with most things, sat to my right. I was wary because of my motion-sickness history.  

We strapped in. As soon as the room went dark, the doors closed and the screen projected space travel, I knew I was in trouble. The floor began to shift in random ways. I immediately felt an all-to-familiar wave of nausea overtake me. I started to panic. Luckily, I was holding the bag containing the refrigerator magnet I had just purchased. I used the bag. I had no choice. 

There were other big family reunions to come in places I don’t care to visit again. But I got smart. Before the next mandatory trip to Florida, I tacked on a few days (without the extended family) in Miami’s South Beach, where I could be surrounded by stylish Art Deco boutique hotels and where I immersed myself in restorative spa treatments.  

Noma Faingold is a writer and photographer who lives in Noe Valley. A native San Franciscan who grew up in the Sunset District, Faingold is a frequent contributor to the Richmond Review and Sunset Beacon newspapers, among others. She is obsessed with pop culture and the arts, especially film, theater and fashion.