Ready to go

School is finishing up, the packing is done, even the Portapotti is disguised. Maxine Jones and her sons are ready to go on their summer camper van trip

Finally I hear the van's service is finished and what I thought were little extras, worth getting done, have brought the bill up to four times what I expected to pay.

The space in front of the house awaits the return of the van. It is almost time to start putting things in it for the holiday. We don't need to pack cases, just fold a few clothes in the cupboards and fill the chemical toilet. I fix in my mind the image of me, Sam, Liam and Colm walking down the front path stepping into the van and driving off.

Colm helped me wash the van today and we flushed out the water tank. The weather has turned cold with fierce showers that pelt like hail. I feel a smug satisfaction in knowing I am taking them away to a better climate. Irish summers are a lottery. You could strike it lucky, but it's unlikely and the occasional heavenly day generally presages disillusion. May and September are often the kindest months, when the sun might shine for a week on end. In May everyone agrees, "this is our summer so we'd better make the most of it."' And in September, "Wouldn't you know it? Just when the schools are back."

I'm stocking up on dried food for the cats and allowing grocery stocks to deplete. I've cancelled the milk. I'm holding off from planning routes and places to stay in order to experience a real leap into the unknown, an escape from the timetable that pins down term time: football, swimming, drama, gym, tennis, French, Cubs, Scouts, piano, guitar, orthodontist, football training, football matches, parties, youth club. In France we'll be able to forget what day of the week it is.

I begin to wonder if we might go to Spain as well and ring the insurance company to ask for a bail bond, which is necessary in the case of traffic accidents. Otherwise, I've been told, the police put everyone in prison until things are sorted out.

The rain is still pouring. The windows are coming loose from their frames in the glass lean-to at the back of the house and the shed door is rotting off its hinges. The house needs serious maintenance work. I'm still worried about the ants. I watch huge spiders patiently wrapping furry bees in tight cocoons until their frenzied buzzing stops.

I've put an IRL sticker on the back of the van and screwed on new cupboard handles.

Sam's primary class is preparing to disband. His reading light fell onto his mattress the other night and smouldered a hole through it. Watching him being a tree in the school play, I imagined an alternative scenario with him swathed in bandages in a burns unit. His room is now off limits, an independent republic of hardened orange peel and single dirty socks. What goes on in the rest of the house does not register in Sam's world. His affinity lies with the radio station he plays full blast and which blots out all other sound.

In a deep blue sky a silver half moon hangs mysteriously in the west. By 9pm, the sun still shining, the moon is high above my head.

"Do you think in the whole world there is another family with a mom called Maxine and three sons called Sam, Liam and Colm?" asks Colm. I doubt it, I said, but who knows? Maybe.

Three days to go and I'm struck down with fever. Well, a cold, but it brought me out in a sweat last night. I wandered the house and ended up watching the Learning Zone on BBC2 – beginner's French. Couldn't lift my head off the pillow this morning. Sam made breakfast and lunch boxes for himself and the others. There's jam everywhere.

The spin cycle has broken on washing machine. Sam's whole class is coming round for a pizza party after school tomorrow – their last day at primary. Dripping washing won't look good. And how can I pack it? I've put up pictures of the class over the past seven years ? sports days, plays, class photos, birthday parties. The party is to appease Sam who, as our departure date draws nearer, desires more and more intensely to simply spend the summer here, hanging out.

Seven thirty on the morning of departure. The sky is murky and the wind howls. It could be mid-October. The leaves have lost their sheen and already litter the green in front of the house. The children are still asleep and I feel strangely calm. Our going away seems as natural as birds migrating for summer. Everything in the house is out of season now – redundant school books, lunch boxes, uniforms, ill-fitting school shoes, calendar scribbled with reminders. The day has come – inevitable but unimaginable.

My calmness is scuppered when the laptop plays up as I'm checking final emails. The laptop and the van are two sides of the same self-sufficiency coin. With the laptop, not only can I amuse the children with DVDs, I can download photos and make notes for articles. The laptop rights itself. My flutter of panic betrays an uncertainty I don't wish to acknowledge.

I have packed well. Everything is in its appropriate cupboard, not a suitcase or bag in use. Only the two bikes on the back and the Portapotti betray the fact we're going on holiday. In one cupboard is six weeks' supply of summer clothes for four people – admittedly not much. Under the passenger seats are DVDs and music tapes, phones and phone chargers. Under the driver seat, tools, plug adapters and spare cupboard door handles. Above the passenger seats, table and chairs, rain coats and fleeces. In the upstairs bed section, sleeping bags, sheets, blankets. Under the back seat, the awning. We have books, toiletries, medicines, curtains, cutlery, crockery, pans, torches. The feeling of being so completely self-contained within a few square feet is as comforting as a hug.

I look at the Portapotti and decide at the last minute to disguise it as a seat. I rush inside and tear off an elasticated corner from the sheet Sam burned, then grab a small tapestry-covered square cushion from the settee. I tie the sheet round the Portapotti and put the cushion on top. Et voila, le dernier cri in home décor.