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.

 

A Day at the Beach

 

A huge wave washed over him, tumbling him down. He popped up above the water in its aftermath, laughing for sheer joy. He hadn’t experienced sheer joy in some time. His being began to breathe.

Sunlight danced over him. He knew, no matter what precautions he took, he’d likely be burned by the end of the day. The fair-skinned boy wouldn’t take cover under a beach umbrella. He preferred to play in the water, jumping in the waves.

He hadn’t been a boy in years. Still a young man, tenuously hanging onto the “young” portion of the phrase, he didn’t care what people thought of a lone wolf playing in the waves.

His wife, Lily, and her friend, Rose, sat on beach chairs under the umbrella and talked about life, their children, whatever else it was women discussed when they hadn’t seen one another in some time. Lily had craved feminine companionship, and he had nothing to contribute to the conversation, so he braved an ocean they thought too cold and too rough. Away from the cares and worries of the workday, he could believe he was a lad again.

The ladies had stood at the edge of the shore letting end waves lap their feet and ankles, spraying wet sand onto their legs and swim suits, their feet sinking deeper each time into the sand. An occasional bolder wave would catch them off guard and unbalance them. Once, Rose fell, and the undertow pulled her out a few feet, where gravelly sand and broken shells formed a barrier between the shoreline and the softer sand under water. Another wave battered her before she regained her footing, and she nearly lost the oversized sunglasses that both protected her eyes from the sun and kept others from fully reading her expression.

That was when the ladies had retreated to the safety of the beach chairs. Liam had been farther out in the water when Rose toppled over, and he couldn’t reach her in time to help. A wave hit him in the back of the head as he tried to reach Rose, and he was sucked under and pulled back out. Unhurt, he emerged above the surface again, but the girls were gone.

Liam returned his attention to the ocean, letting the ladies tend to themselves. Off in the distance, a tourist cruise ship floated across the horizon. Closer to the shore, children and teens with boogie boards tried to anticipate the breaking waves to ride in to the beach. Liam tried to avoid the sections where the boogie boarders were, and felt much like a child himself as he jumped and dodged.

He tried to keep himself between two life guard towers so he wouldn’t drift too far down shore from where the women had set up the three chairs. He chuckled to himself about the chairs. He wasn’t one to sit on the beach when there was a perfectly good ocean to splash in. Perhaps the fact that he’d been a teenager before he’d ever set foot in an ocean caused him to have little appreciation for hot sand.

His childhood memories did not include building sand castles and filling their moats with buckets of water. He hadn’t spent hours being buried or burying friends in the sand, leaving only the head free.

His only attempt at lying on the beach for a suntan had resulted in sun poisoning with its contingent of large and small blisters rupturing, sending trickles of water down his back. He had spent sleepless nights in pain, feeling as if his skin would rip. When his skin had finally molted, the new skin was patterned with freckles.

Although his wife and her friend sat under a large beach umbrella, he couldn’t imagine they were comfortable. Between the sand, and the sun beating on the umbrella, they essentially baked as they enmeshed themselves in girl talk.

Once, when he turned back toward the beach, he saw Lily and Rose standing at the water’s edge, bending to scoop water onto their arms. It made him think of something his mother had one cold him about macaroni: after it was finished cooking, she had to rinse it with cold water to get rid of the extra starch and stop the cooking process. He thought it was representative of what the ladies were doing. Their smiles indicated their previous solemn conversation had ended.

Liam dutifully approached them.

“Coming in?” he asked.

“It’s still rough, although it’s not as cold as it was before,” Rose said. Lily looked like she wanted to move farther in.

“Once you’re in it, it doesn’t feel cold at all. It’s quite refreshing,” Liam replied.

They smiled as if to say, “Foolish boy,” but Lily’s smile carried a tinge of regret.

Standing a little farther into the water, Liam felt the pull of the undertow, and had to work to maintain his balance. As Rose resumed her conversation with Lily, Liam felt as if he’d been dismissed. He dove into a wave and let the undertow carry him back out to where he’d been before. When he looked back, the ladies had once again retreated to their chairs.

Left alone in a thin crowd of wave seekers, Liam watched the low-flying planes trailing advertisement banners move above the area. He didn’t care what they advertised; they were part of the experience of the shore in this part of the world. He’d been to the Mediterranean once but it hadn’t dawned on him until he returned that the “missing piece” he’d felt while there was due to a lack of advertisement planes.

The waves came in farther and higher now as the tide began to come in. The beach rose steeply from the water line to the part where the sunbathers sat. Now, waves that had slowly crept up the incline before were breaking over the top, sending rivulets under feet and between chairs. Few of the water-lovers were out much beyond the gravel line.

He looked up at the blue of the sky whose only clouds were the thin contrails of passing jets. The sun was farther west, and the lifeguards were beginning to pack up their gear.

He decided the women would likely want to leave sometime soon. Liam turned to let the waves wash him shoreward, and saw Rose and Lily standing and chatting in ankle deep waves. He continued to wash in. When he reached the gravel line he stood – or tried to. A large wave crashed into him, sending him sprawling. The resulting undertow dragged him along the sand, back into the water. He laughed and stood, going out a little farther to rinse off the sand, then returned. The ladies were splashing themselves with the sandy water washing up in the shallows. He couldn’t imagine how that did anything but coat them with sand.

He stood with them for a few moments, waiting for an opening in the conversation. Rose’s grandson had evidently been getting up to some antics last time she saw him, as three-year-olds do, and her youngest son, Jim, was still a worry.

“You know, Jim  needs to start getting more responsible,” she said. “Glenn is a constant worry with his health, and I need to know someone will take care of Glenn and me in our old age. Let’s face it, we’re getting old.”

Old age! Liam was the same age as Lily and Rose, and he certainly didn’t feel or think of himself as old. He didn’t intend to worry about someone taking care of him. He’d take care of himself and live his life until old age snuck up and sabotaged him. Until that time, he would act and do and live his life as independently as he ever had. Life was what you made it, and he didn’t intend to make it a long, slow process of dying. It pained him to see Lily nodding her head in agreement with Rose.

Did she feel old? Was she looking for a caretaker in their son? Liam didn’t believe that was Dylan’s purpose in life. He had his own hopes and dreams. He didn’t need his parents to become an albatross.

“Have you had enough of swimming?” Lily asked.

“That will never happen, but I am hungry,” he replied.

The ladies nodded and Rose mentioned a place she knew on the island that had marvelous food. They trudged up the incline to where their chairs waited under a multicolor umbrella along the flat, level expanse of sand embedded with shell shards.

Rose and Lily only had their hands and legs to dry. As Liam ruffled his towel over his hair and face, he felt the sting of sunburn on his cheeks. He dried off, draped the towel over his shoulders and folded the chair he hadn’t used. Once the girls had folded towels and chairs, put towels, hats and cell phones in beach bags and closed the umbrella, the threesome marched up the beach to the road.

A bench at the entrance to the beach allowed them to sit and dry the remnants of sand and surf from their feet before they put on flip flops and headed to the beach house.

Rose’s house was lovely, more so since the post-hurricane renovations. Each year she invited them for a weekend. Often others who had also gone to school with them would come. This year the others couldn’t make it, and Liam felt more of a fifth wheel. Even though the others were also women, usually one or other tempered the conversations so they didn’t all sound like doom and gloom prognosticators of imminent old age. Perhaps next year, if the others didn’t come, Liam would suggest Lily go on her own for a ladies’ weekend with Rose.

Once they had all showered and changed, they went to the restaurant. Liam enjoyed the beachy feel of the place. Since it was walking distance from the house, they didn’t need to drive. That meant they were all able to order drinks.

Rose realized Liam had not been part of the conversation all afternoon, and tried to turn it to subjects in which he might participate. Rose was a good hostess, despite the fact that she constantly denigrated her abilities as being disorganized.

Liam didn’t really mind being left out of the conversation most of the time. The girls were fast friends who seldom got to see each other, and he didn’t want to interrupt their catching up.  Over crab cakes and baked potatoes, Rose asked Liam about what he’d been doing since she saw him last.

“I finally published that book last year, and I’m waiting for my artist friend to finish the cover for one from a different series.”

“Are you writing anything now?”

“I’m between things. I’ve been trying my hand at short stories based on prompts I found on a website. It’s kind of fun. If a prompt doesn’t speak to me, I let that one go and wait for the next week’s prompt.”

“Do you enter them in a contest or anything?”

“No, I usually don’t find inspiration before the deadlines. If something looks like my kind of prompt but I don’t have an idea at the moment, I write the prompt in a notebook I just started keeping. Maybe at some other time I’ll have an idea for it.”

He stopped, noticing the absence in her eyes. She wanted to chat with him for a moment or two, but she wasn’t a writer, and didn’t know how to maintain interest in something so foreign to her sensibilities. He understood. He could go on for hours about writing or about his characters, and it usually bored most people to tears. Lily often reminded him not to go on and on about it before they went anywhere.

He’d kept it brief, he hoped. He’d participated. Now it was someone else’s turn.

The conversation turned to Rose’s husband and inevitably, to his health. The last time Liam had seen Glenn, he seemed all right. Glenn spent a fair amount of his time discussing his health issues.  Liam would attempt to turn the conversation to something else, but inevitably it returned to Glenn’s health. That was often because Liam had touched on an interest Glenn could no longer participate in because his vision was “off” as he put it. Sometimes the discussion involved food, which would also return the conversation to health issues. Glenn was diabetic.

Liam never noticed until he was with the “flower girls” – Lily, Rose and their other childhood friend, Heather – that he enjoyed exceptionally good health. He hoped that wasn’t a portent to a sudden death at an early age. He never entertained such thoughts unless he was among the flowers.

After dinner the ladies lingered over coffee. Liam lingered over a glass of wine. Usually the designated driver, he often had to forego the drinks. Tonight he was in a position to enjoy.

He was actually enjoying his third glass of wine, the ladies’ conversation swirling around his head like a fine piece of music: one he knew well, but didn’t have to pay close attention to. It crossed his mind briefly that he might embarrass himself by staggering on the way home. He didn’t think he was that far gone, though.

The waiter fluttered around them, offering the check, asking if there was anything else they wanted, as if he were in a great hurry to see them gone. There was no reason.  No crowd waited for seats, and there were a few hours until closing. Besides, they were still finishing their drinks.

Liam studied the check and pulled a credit card out of his wallet. He left the card sticking partly out of the check wallet at the edge of the table. The waiter swooped in to take care of it, and was back moments later with the receipt for Liam to sign. Liam scrolled his signature, and contrary to what the waiter deserved for trying to hurry them on their way, left a generous tip, closed the folder and ignored it at the edge of the table as he enjoyed his remaining wine.

Rose noticed the exchange between the waiter and Liam.

“How much do I owe you?” she asked.

“Don’t be absurd. You’re putting us up for the weekend. This is the least I can do.

She had the grace not to argue. This was the dance they did every year.

When they had finished, they strolled down the main street, a cool breeze making the evening pleasant. A fair number of people congregated at the ice cream stands and candy shops. A surprising number of people, both teens and adults, rode bicycles in the semi-darkness.

Liam would have enjoyed a stroll on the beach at the water’s edge, but he knew what sort of response that suggestion would get. He contented himself with the walk back to Rose’s house.

They played a board game when they arrived at the house. There was an unwritten rule whenever they visited that computers and televisions were off limits. Weekends at the shore were disconnect weekends. Even mobile phones were only to be checked once or twice in a day.

The game, Trivial Pursuit, brought groans as well as gales of laughter. The three acknowledged one another’s areas of expertise and their own weaknesses. It took well over an hour before Lily won the game.

They went to bed after that, having made sketchy plans about what they would do the next day before they left for home.

“That was very nice of you to pay for dinner,” Lily said as they undressed.

“What else would I do?”

“Did you have a good time today?”

“I did,” Liam said. “I was surprised the two of you didn’t get into the water. You usually do.”

“I would like to have gone in, but Rose kept saying it was too cold and too rough. Of course, I imagine she has lots of opportunities to swim in the ocean, so it’s not a big deal for her.”

“All that old talk,” Liam said, shaking his head. “Since when are any of us old?”

“I suppose because Glenn has so many health issues, she feels more in touch with reality. He’s a bit older than we are. And they married younger,” Lily said. “I hope you don’t mind that she and I chatted so much.”

They climbed into bed and he kissed her.

“Not at all. We don’t see her that often. The two of you need to catch up.”

“It’s a shame Heather couldn’t come this time.”

“Mm,” he said, sleep weighting his eyes and turning his mind to mush.

In the morning they’d dawdle over breakfast, and take a walk out by the lighthouse before packing the car for the drive home. There would be the usual round of pictures to document this year’s get-together, promises made to have an outing before next summer that would never come to fruition, and Liam and Lily would be off, warm in the afterglow of a pleasant change from the weekend as usual.