How I Spent My Summer Vacation

 

 

One of the more bothersome exercises of my childhood was the annual “How I Spent My Summer Vacation” essay we were required to write from about 4^th grade to 8^th grade.

Unfortunately, the only two times my family went on vacation during my childhood happened at the end of first and second grades, and we went to the same place both times.

“My family doesn’t take vacations,” doesn’t make for much of an essay. Hinting that we were too poor for vacations wasn’t something a not-very-popular child would willingly admit, although that’s what my mother would have me believe.

Years later, my brother and I were talking about our dearth of vacations, and he said it had little to do with money. My father simply didn’t like going on vacation.

I knew he hated going to the shore. As a result, I was 13 the first time I ever went to the shore, and it wasn’t with my family. A neighbor I used to babysit for invited me.

Days in the ocean and afternoons at the arcades on the boardwalk were payment for the one or two evenings of watching the kids while the grownups went out on the town without children in tow.

It was great, despite the worst case of sun poisoning I’ve ever had. Those were the days before sun blocks with SPF numbers.

Looking back, the grownups were taking a bit of a risk that probably wouldn’t happen now. In the late ‘60s a 13-year-old could babysit without question. But there were no mobile phones. In fact, I’m not sure there was a phone in the house they were renting. It wouldn’t have mattered. I had no idea where they were going, so there was no number for me to call in case of emergency except the police.

That’s a huge responsibility for a child barely into the teen years watching three children under the age of ten. But nothing happened, so I thought nothing of it.

I also had a good deal of responsibility for the two older children when we were at the beach (the youngest was an infant). I was in charge while they were in the water, although at least one adult was always nearby. I was more the entertainment so the adults could enjoy the beach.

At the time, what was being asked of me didn't seem like much, but  that responsibility now strikes me as too much for the child I was at the time. It’s what was expected then. I wouldn’t have traded in the chance to go to the shore for anything.

The only thing that marred the trip – aside from the pain of glow-in-the-dark, Santa-suit red skin – was a demand my mother had made of me. She didn’t know the neighbor all that well, since she hadn't been in the neighborhood a year. I’d spent that time babysitting for her once or twice a week. Still, my mother didn’t want to be beholden to someone she barely knew for my upkeep for two weeks. She gave me some money and told me not to let them pay for everything I did.

I tried paying for ice cream or amusement park rides, but they didn’t want me spending all my money when they had invited me. They didn’t understand. I thought my mother would be upset if I came home with all the money she gave me.

After being repeatedly refused the right to use my own money, I ended up one night crying in the bathroom. I was found out, and they thought I was homesick. Despite insisting I wasn’t, that’s what all the grownups believed. How humiliating! I was 13, after all, far too old to be homesick because of a two-week vacation. But I couldn’t tell them the real reason I was crying. That was a confidence between my mother and me.

Still, the following September, I finally had an essay to write. Of course, I left out the part about crying, and focused on the amusement park in Wildwood and jumping through waves in Cape May.

My childhood was pretty good, despite the fact that we didn’t go on vacations. We went to local state parks to swim and have picnics, and I had a few friends with swimming pools who sometimes invited me over. There was also one local creek (pronounced crick where I'm from) where we swam on weekends, and my brother sometimes took me with him to swim there during the week. (When I was older I went there on my own, another risky endeavor.)

There was always the hose in the back yard to cool off with on steamy days. On the not so hot summer days there were woods to explore and sometimes blackberries to pick.

I adored the days off from school from mid-June to Labor Day, days where there were no school requirements, when I could sit in my tree fort and read the books I wanted to read, or ride my bike all over the neighborhood.

There were days I accompanied my mother to the grocery store and learned about comparison shopping, and why some products were better to get as the brand name while others were just as good if you had the store brand. I learned estimating totals and reading labels, how to order lunchmeat at the deli counter – and my mother always wanted the American cheese sliced thin – and which aisles to find particular items.

In reality, those things would have been great to include in the summer vacation essay, so my teachers would know I hadn’t squandered my time in the summer. But I was looking for the glamorous vacation – or at least a week at camp – and came up empty. So I tried to glamorize days at friends’ pools and never mentioned the continuing education at the grocery store or the ecological education in the woods and state parks.

At 14 I had the ultimate summer vacation, not because of where I went, but because of how I went.

My aunt, who lived in a suburb of Chicago, was visiting some of our relatives in Philadelphia. During a family get-together, she invited me to come visit her family in Illinois.

As the youngest and only girl, whenever I wanted to do something, the answer was usually no. My parents wouldn’t be going, so the idea of my traveling alone halfway across the country was not likely. But parents can be surprising.

I would have to fly to Chicago alone. That kind of flight was expensive by my family’s standards. But we learned about a program the airline TWA had for teens up to age 21. It was called the 50/50 club (I still have my membership card, even though TWA no longer exists). A teen could fly for 50% off the ticket price. The ticket was stand-by, so I might have to wait for the next flight. But in 1969, especially midweek, mid-afternoon, it was generally expected that I could get on my chosen flight.

My mother took me to the airport, and my aunt would pick me up in Chicago. In those days before the first plane hijacking, family members could accompany the person flying right up to the boarding gate, no security or x-rays, and the traveler could be met at the arrival gate at the other end.

At 14, getting on the plane unaccompanied was exciting. I remember I had a window seat. I must have looked like a wide-eyed country bumpkin to the stewardesses – they all looked like my Barbie doll when she was wearing her stewardess uniform, only without the cotton ponytail – but at least I wasn’t a trouble maker. I don’t think I even took off my seat belt through the entire flight.

I arrived at O’Hare International Airport and started looking for my aunt. I had no idea where I was supposed to meet her. Since I didn’t see her, I began following the other passengers to baggage claim.

I had only gone a short distance when I heard my name called. I turned and came face-to-face not with my aunt, but with my uncle. He’d come in from a business trip and waited until my flight arrived to save my aunt the trip.

While the vacation itself wasn’t extraordinary, traveling solo sparked my love of travel. I spent a month with my relatives where five children – three boys and two girls – provided entertainment I didn’t normally have. At home, one brother was away attending university and the other was back from Vietnam, but still in the army.

Because we had always lived at least a state’s distance away from this set of relatives, I didn’t know these cousins as well as many of my other cousins. I did know that the oldest boy, who was a year younger than I was, hated me.

The girls were quite a bit younger than I, but we got along. I think most little girls enjoy it when an older cousin pays attention to them. We played games together and generally got to know one another. I didn’t have to worry about anyone making fun of me for playing with younger girls since they were cousins.

I also spent time playing with the two younger boys. The one who didn’t like me was away at scout camp or something through most of the time I was there.

The film Romeo and Juliette, with Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey came out that summer. I desperately wanted to see it. I imagine my aunt called my mother for permission – I’m fairly certain it was R rated, and I wasn’t old enough to go unless accompanied by an adult. She said she wanted to see if it was appropriate for her two eldest sons, and would I like to go with her to see it?

What an exciting afternoon! We had a great time, just the two of us, and I felt quite grown up because she thought I was mature enough to see the film. After seeing it, she decided the boys were too young.

As with most women I was either related to or otherwise close to at the time, I felt more comfortable talking with my aunt than I did with my mother. My aunt wasn’t the disciplinarian or the one who usually said no. She was also 10 years younger than my mother, and shared with me the distinction of being the youngest in the family and the only girl (and left-handed) – although she had four older brothers (one being my father), and I had two.

We talked about a lot of different things, and I felt comfortable around her, despite the fact that we had so seldom seen each other. She even recommended me as a babysitter to one of her friends whose regular babysitters were all busy one night. So, I even had the chance to make some money on my vacation.

My aunt went back east for a wedding one weekend, and my uncle took us all to the Milwaukee Zoo. He couldn’t believe that, at 14, I’d never been to the zoo, especially since I lived so close to the Philadelphia Zoo, the oldest one in the country. I told him my father always said if the zoo wanted me badly enough, they could come get me.

The real reason was that my mother was allergic to animal dander, although I don’t think dogs and cats bothered her. But never let the facts stand in the way of a good story.

I also saw the moon landing while I was at my aunt’s, as well as Prince Charles’ investiture as Prince of Wales. By the end of that day, I had his investiture speech memorized – I was quite the monarchist at the time.

After a month at my aunt’s, I returned home, a seasoned traveler. I had taken my first trip ever on a plane, and I’d done it alone.

Unfortunately, after such a monumental achievement, I was about to start high school, where the focus was on the writing of authors like Shakespeare, Ibsen, Dickens and Dostoyevsky, so having finally been armed with the fuel for the summer vacation essay, I didn’t get to write it.

My next plane trip wasn’t until seven years later, when I flew to England for a semester abroad. While I was technically with classmates then, once there I had to navigate life on my own.

The experience of solo travel and my parents’ trust in me to take such a trip by myself set me up to fearlessly travel abroad after college, and if I had no one to travel with, I would simply go alone. Probably because of my lack of going somewhere for vacation as a child, I took every opportunity to go places as an adult.

My mother was never comfortable enough to travel alone. Her biggest solo adventure was flying to Florida to visit my brother, where I took her to the airport and pointed her in the right direction in Philadelphia, and my brother collected her in Florida. She was a nervous wreck the whole flight.

My father grudgingly – probably due to ill health – went with us to Colorado twice to visit the same brother when he lived there, but my dad never really cared to travel. Since I have relatives scattered all over the U.S., his dislike of travel meant that I never met a fair few of my cousins until I was an adult -- and a couple I've never met.

My wanderlust is definitely not inherited from either parent, although both brothers have traveled to the limits of their purse strings. I sometimes wonder if the three of us are changelings left by the fairy folk, and somewhere three other sibling are living with a family that can’t understand their dislike of travel.

 

Life Is Funny That Way

 

 

Life is funny sometimes. A few months ago I was reading through all of the birthday wishes on Facebook, thinking again how nice it is that so many people take the time to say happy birthday on Facebook. 

Yeah, I know, they tell you whose birthday it is and they supply all of the words, in case you don’t have time to think up something clever on your own, or in case it’s someone you only know on FB, rather than as a family member or an in-real-life friend. The internet has made it easy – and sometimes vastly impersonal – to contact people.

I don’t usually single people out for a blog, and I’m not naming names, so I hope this isn’t embarrassing.

The day after my birthday, while I was finishing up thanking people who had left messages on my feed or in my notifications, I noticed what I call a “Facebook email” from a friend. I was surprised by a lot of it, and she seemed a little surprised that we had so much in common politically, socially and even the challenges we’ve faced.

I didn’t know those things about her. She discovered them about me by being on Facebook with me as well as reading my blogs.

A little background. This woman and I were born a day apart in the same hospital. In fact, our mothers were in the same room. I was a preemie, and my mother once told me that her mother said she thought her baby was the smallest she’d ever seen until she saw me. In fact, if I’d been born an hour later, we would have shared the same birthday.

So we’ve kind of known each other since birth. And we were in the same parish, so we saw each other in church on a weekly basis, and then were in school together, I believe for the full 12 years, although we weren’t in many, if any classes together in high school. I’m not even sure if we were in the same class every year in elementary school.

I always considered her my friend, and said hi to her as we were leaving church. We were friendly in elementary school, but we lived a town apart (actually less than a mile apart, but I didn’t know that growing up), so she had friends from her neighborhood. My so-called neighborhood friends were not in my grade, so at recess, I generally did not have friends. 

I did the rounds of the recess yard until I found someone who would let me play with them. If that didn’t happen, I played Jacks by myself or wandered around imagining. I was never me in the recess yard. I was one of my characters.

Since she had her friends, we didn’t often play together at school. It was enough for me knowing that I knew her, and we had our birth “friendship” that somehow always made me feel a connection to her.

When high school ended, I went to Penn State, and she went – wherever it was she went. We lost contact. For me, that happened with most people, although I do have a core of three other people I went to at least part of elementary school and high school with that I’ve generally kept in contact with most of the time since high school graduation. I even went to two of their weddings.

It never seemed strange to me that I didn’t keep in contact with people. Most people thought I was weird or boring or whatever they thought.

I had a friend a year younger that I met in high school. Everyone thought she was my sister. I don’t have any sisters, but even my mother thought this girl looked like she could be my sister. Well, the fake sister moved away at the end of my sophomore year in high school. I was devastated because we had a blast together. I think I was at my funniest when I was around her.

We pledged our undying friendship, like Anne of Green Gables and her bosom friend, Diana, promised to write, and then she moved. We had each other’s addresses. Yet somehow, we never managed to get around to writing. I’ve often wondered what happened to her, and I do think of her often.

And like my “fake sister”, my “birth friend” and I, while not pledging unfailing friendship or promising to write, went our separate ways, and every time there was a class reunion, I’d wonder if she’d be there. I went to most of them.

I only recently discovered how much we had in common. I knew we were both left-handed (I always know which of my friends are left-handed; it’s a lefty thing.). She’s the oldest and only girl in her family, and I think she has two brothers.  I’m the youngest and only girl in my family, and have two brothers. That was pretty much what I knew of our commonalities.

It turns out we both married later (late 30s), never had kids, and we both like big dogs. Apparently we also have some of the same challenges I’ve written about in my blogs in common. It could have acted as a bond between us had we known.

I just never thought people were much interested in me or the things I did.

I don’t know many people who write or are as passionate about writing as I am, so there aren’t many people I can talk with about writing. Most people get bored once you start talking about your characters. After all, according to them, the characters aren’t real. It’s not like them talking about their children. (I suppose they’ve never read The Velveteen Rabbit to know what becoming real really is.)

It made my day to hear someone who, until our reunion in 2023 hadn’t seen me in 50 years, express similar anxieties growing up that I’d had, someone I thought was so together and talented. The idea she expressed, that my writing touched a lot of people was something I never really considered. I don’t think of many of my topics as important.

I always think of myself as being a bit of a nuisance announcing my blog on 3 group pages, my own page and my author page on the chance that a couple of people want to read them. I picture people rolling their eyes and saying, “I wonder what she’s on about this time.”

Yeah, some people may be interested in some of my topics. But I do get worried when the readership numbers drop considerably. I think, oh, did I say something offensive last time? How do I rectify that? Because I get few, if any, comments on my work.

Yes, I try to take into consideration that between Thanksgiving and New Year’s people are busy and just don’t have time to read some silly blog. And I never know what people are behind the readership count.

I always feel like I come off as a bit self-absorbed when I talk about my books and where people can find them. It’s not like I have a real publisher. They’re all self-published, and you won’t find them in bookstores – there are still bookstores, right? 

And I also have to mention my pen name, Bridget McGowan, since you wouldn’t find my books by looking under my given name. So in my defense, I have to let people know about my books if they’re ever going to find them.

I do like talking about my books, though. It isn’t a, “Hey, look at me, I’m some bigshot author,” though, especially since I haven't sold more than 10 of any of them. It’s “Let me tell you about my current best friend.” And that would be the main character of the book.

People look surprised when they ask how many books I have on Amazon and I say 17. I guess they’re expecting me to say one or two. 

The thing is, I’ve written 25. I just don’t have covers for the rest (people who do covers are very expensive, so my husband, Blue Scream of Jeff – read his blogs – has done most of my covers.) I designed two, but he had to do the computer stuff to them, since he won’t teach me how, and I don’t have the program, anyway. So I’m waiting to have covers done for the rest. 

Meanwhile, I’m working on the next novel, with two that I’ve promised to write in mental storage, and another idea in its 5^th month of gestation.

But my birth friend gave me encouragement to keep going, knowing that somehow I’ve touched others with what I had to say. Wow. Who knew?

Senses and Sensibility

 

 

Several months ago, a friend of mine that I’ve known since I was about 15, asked me in a text if I might be on the autism spectrum. The question was based on something I’d said in one of my blogs, but came so out of left field that it was a true WTF moment, and kind of gave me mental whiplash.

While I believe what I said is that I often don’t pick up on social cues, which, while it can be part of an indication of autism, is also an identifying characteristic of several other “disabilities,” including attention deficit, with which I was diagnosed as an adult. An autism diagnosis requires at least three identifying characteristics, and where you are on the spectrum is dependent on how many characteristics you exhibit, and the severity of those characteristics.

So to the question, a resounding no; I am not remotely autistic.

I also tend toward lower muscle tone, but that doesn’t mean I have Cerebral Palsy. I do not. Having been a 34-week preemie, it’s generally the norm to have slightly lower tone, which expresses itself in hyper-extension of fingers, knees and elbows. The hyperextension has decreased with age, but not because I’m cured. Rather, arthritis has a say in what my joints do now.

I suppose, as a therapist, I’m keenly tuned in to my sensory sensitivities.

My two strongest senses are taste and smell.

I often think I was born with too many taste buds -- but not necessarly too much taste. I have been told several times in biology classes that I can’t taste bitter because I don’t have the receptors. 

Oh, but I can. Either my bitter receptors are in the wrong place or I’ve developed a keen ability to combine a couple of other receptor types to interpret bitter. In either case, a bitter pill is just as hard for me to swallow. I can't, however, tell the difference in taste of a vanilla milkshake and a chocolate one.

I remember when I was little, being expected to try a variety of foods. I could never understand this because I could tell by smell if I wasn’t going to like something. But taste was far more intense. I used to think to myself – and may have actually said it a few times – that some things had too much taste in them, so I didn’t like them.

Cooked broccoli was one of those things. Of course, we didn’t have broccoli much, if ever, since my dad didn’t like it. Ours was a household where corn, green beans, peas and carrots were what anyone was talking about when vegetables were mentioned, and there was also salad. Special occasions, like Christmas and Thanksgiving, had asparagus. My mother and one brother ate spinach. Baked beans, and beets also made an appearance from time to time. I would eat salad or celery, and corn. I even liked radishes, and would eat one on its own. But anything else had too much taste.

While I liked spaghetti sauce, trying to pick out all of the tiny, diced pieces of onions and peppers my mother insisted on putting in before the sauce got cold was an Olympic event. To this day bell peppers of any color cause me actual digestive pain, and I detest the fact that raw onions will not leave. I hate waking up the day after consuming something with raw onions with the taste of onions in my mouth. No amount of scrubbing my tongue until I gag will rid me of that awful, left-over taste. Talk about something with too much taste!

Oddly, though, cooked onions, while I generally don’t care for them, don’t present the problem their raw counterpart does. And inexplicably, I actually like French Onion soup, and onion dip with my potato chips. Of course, this is something that came with maturity. I couldn’t have eaten those things as a child. (I didn't even like pizza until I was 10.)

Even broccoli, which I now like, is something I can only eat in small doses – like a half a cup maximum – if it’s cooked. More if they're raw.

All of the vegetables I don’t like are because they have too strong a taste to me – except baked beans, which are simply too disgusting in that brown slime they’re served in – and beets, which taste like dirt, no matter what you do to them. I was never one to eat mud pies as a child.

What could have mitigated my picky eating habits as a child is the fact that raw vegetables are much more palatable to me. Raw broccoli and cauliflower, even raw peas if they’re fresh, are preferable to the overpowering taste they have once cooked.

My mother came from the school of belief that you couldn’t simply eat vegetables raw. They must, unless they were salad, be cooked. Otherwise, they would give one a stomach ache.

I have eaten an entire raw potato without ill effects, and no other raw vegetable has ever come back to haunt me except peppers and onions.

I do have ones I prefer to eat cooked: zucchini, eggplant, spaghetti squash, acorn squash and butternut squash. Anything else is fair game either way, although I do prefer cauliflower raw.

Carrots are the one exception. I don’t care for them raw unless they’re shredded in a salad so as to have no taste, and can only eat them cooked if they’re in a stew or mixed in mashed potatoes to disguise their bitter flavor. Or as carrot cake. Why can’t all vegetables be cake?

When it comes down to it, I actually do eat a fair variety of vegetables; I just can’t handle them if they’re spiked with onions and peppers, as people so often do to them.

For the things that I can’t eat, it does no good to say, “Eat it anyway!” As I try to swallow something I don’t like, my throat closes as if I’m about to take poison, and the thing won’t go down. It takes huge quantities of liquid to entice it down my throat, and that’s no guarantee that I won’t gag or that the offending item will stay in my stomach.

Fish is another thing that often comes with too much taste. I’ve often said, only half in jest, that I believe fish should be served square and breaded, as God intended. And it needs a fair amount of either ketchup or cocktail sauce – and never, ever tartar sauce. Fish sticks are the French fries of the fish world.

As a child, I didn’t like shell fish, which is good because they’re often at the pricy end of the food chain. I would eat crab cakes, provided there weren’t pieces of shell lurking in them (and I've had that experience, even in pricey restaurants). At some point after puberty, I developed a taste for shrimp, lobster and scallops.  I’ve always liked clams and oysters, provided they’re completely cooked. None of that slime on the half shell, thanks. 

I suppose I could never get on with the rich and famous because I can't stand caviar. That tastes like a dead fish that's been rotting on the shore for several days smells. I do not like raw fish. Period. End of story.

My preferences in fish tend toward flounder, cod (only in the UK, breaded, from a chippy), haddock, tilapia and tuna fish from a can, packed in water, not oil. And those fish had best not have a single bone in them. If I get the slightest piece of bone in my mouth, I’m done. I would gag on any other attempt at that same fish from my plate. I don’t consider it a good presentation to have head, tail or skin on a fish you expect me to actually eat. Fish with bones, head, tail and skin belong in an aquarium, not on a plate. As you can see, I’m more comfortable at a fish and chips shop than a fine dining restaurant if fish is on the menu. And I absolutely can't swallow any form of salmon. I think I may truly be allergic to it.

I’m much less picky about meat. I like chicken and turkey. Duck is okay, but it’s greasy. I like pork, including ham, beef as long as it doesn’t have a lot of marbling to have to pick through, and Bambi steaks are okay, although I don’t care for ground venison. I used to be able to eat veal, but I was once served undercooked veal, and haven’t been able to wipe that taste from memory, so all subsequent attempts have tasted like that undercooked baby.

One meat I can’t eat is lamb, and presumably mutton. Aside from the thing tasting the way it smells in the barnyard, it’s very hard to breathe after I eat a piece of lamb, as if the meat sucked all of the air from my lungs.

Of course, I don’t eat organ meats. I know what those organs do inside the body, and I wouldn’t want to put things that perform those functions in my mouth. Besides, they have too much taste, which hurts my taste buds.

Nonfood smells frequently bother me, so it’s not just picky eating. Usually, the offending smells are not those that occur in nature, but those invented in a lab.

While I detest the smell of lavender in soaps, perfumes or air fresheners, I’ve never noticed that lavender in the field is offensive. Essential oil, air freshener, etc., are just horrible. 

I also don’t like the smell of most detergents. Just walking down the laundry detergent aisle at the store sets me coughing and sneezing. My laundry detergent is unscented or the “Sensitive skin” variety. To have something washed in regular detergent near my face is simply asking for problems. For my own protection, I have started bringing my own pillowcase with me whenever I’m staying overnight anywhere, just in case I need it.

If I’m buying floor cleaner, I’ll get the lemon scent. “Fresh Scent,” “Spring Scent” or “Citrus” that isn’t specifically lemon, are too risky for my nose.

It goes without saying that I don’t use plug-in air scents. I’ve tried a few, and none are breathable. I also don’t like headaches they cause.

So those who have always accused me of being a picky eater now know, it’s not just food; it’s tastes and smells. I’d be happy to find a vegetable with no taste, just a crisp crunch. Oh, yeah -- celery.