I married very well.  At the moment of this writing I am aboard my FIL’s trawler steaming from Martha’s Vineyard back to Cape Cod.  My BIL has been hosting our family at the old home place on Chappaquiddick -- one of the last authentic places on earth.  Chappy would be the ideal place to unplug -- it’s a rustic spot with no TVs, no AC, limited electricity and spotty phone.  Overall, a great place to get low-tech.

Would be.

Two laptops with DVDs spinning -- one rigged with internet, cell phones chirping, my iPhone bringing me the latest emails and updates.  I Twittered.  

Despite the rustic setting and all the impediments to technology that a small island in Nantucket Sound can present, the best our little tribe could manage was a kind of digital diet, a low pixel plan with slim bandwidth.  Unplugged?  No way.

And here I am, rocking and rolling in the snug salon of the Camano, three miles off Hyannis, clicking and clacking away.  Bubba is perched happily at the helm station, doing his best “Deadliest Catch” imitation, watching the GPS system and monitoring the marine radio.  But there’s no avoiding it.  I’m working.

It’s not something I’m proud of: I sneak off to check my email like an animal skulking into the woods to take a dump.  I cower, curled into a fetal position under a staircase, listening in to a conference call.  I tuck in the kids, have a nightcap with Aunty Kendall, then tiptoe to the computer for just a late night paragraph or two.

I know that I would be a better father if I just shut it all down.  I would be more attentive to the kids, more available to my wife to help out with the endless vacation logistics of lunch packing and sunscreen applying.  I also know that choice is involved.  I could clearly choose to unplug it all for just a few days: DadLabs will run crisply without my interference, more so than ever, in all likelihood.

But unplugging doesn’t seem right.  It doesn’t seem like something I can do without serious consequences, so I try to make it all work with rigged-up, lame-ass compromises.  Stay home a day when the family goes to the beach, but don’t check the phone when you are with them.  Write at night, make the side trip to New York as quick as possible, but, in the end, what I’ve got is a working vacation.

Does a working vacation function as either work or vacation?  For us the  answer is: well enough.  Like most things with parenting, it’s an art of compromise.  We’ve kept alive the essential family tradition that has taken us more than a decade to build, while at the same time allowing me to meet the my work obligations well enough not to harm the business.

Not perfect.  Here I sit writing.  But the seas are calm this morning, and my son just caught a glimpse of the lighthouse that stands above his summer home.