My July 4th
weekend was perfect – sun, fireworks, and even the perfect amount of rain to
cool down the heat of the day.
I really do love summer.
My mom was
a teacher, so she had summers off. So, we would spend a lot of time together
during the summer months. There was always something to do, and she was a great
partner in crime.
Growing up,
we always had a big garden, and Mom spent a lot of time canning – you know,
preserving foods by putting it in sealed cans. I am not sure that she loved
to can, or if it was that we were on a fixed income and it was the only way we
got through the winter months. Regardless, it was fun.
She would can
everything from vegetables to sauces, but my favorite of all were the jellies
and jams. Why? Well, there is something so fun about picking the fruit for the
jams!
I remember
when I was little we would go strawberry or raspberry picking. It always ended up
with me bleeding because I refused to wear long pants and would get beat up by
the briers. My mom would create competitive games for me to see who could fill
up the containers faster, which often led to green berries being picked just to
get the numbers. There was no quality control until later, and she never
specified they couldn’t be green!
These times
have always been times that I cherish.
We always
took a two-week vacation the first two weeks in August, when my Dad finished
teaching summer school. We would go camping in Maine and stop to see family
along the way.
My favorite
part of the trip was visiting with my father’s aunt in Massachusetts. We would
eat seafood and visit cousins (and there were a lot of them!). As an only child
myself, watching the brother/sister dynamics between my dad and his sister was
always fascinating.
Camping in
a tent, on the other hand, was a love-hate kind of thing. We loved it because
it was the only way we could afford the vacation. However, there was always a
twist.
You can’t
predict or control the weather, so that always created a tremendous challenge. I
remember being stuck in torrential rainstorms one year for almost all of the
two weeks. My father told me if I cried to go home my mother would give in.
There was
also the dreaded walk to go to the bathroom in the middle of the pitch black
night to the one-stall bathroom. It always seemed like a million miles
away.
The
priceless part, and the most meaningful part of the trip, was the opportunity
to spend time in a beautiful part of the country with two people who I still
adore to this day. We had fun, regardless of the weather or how long the walk
to the bathroom was.
Playing Memory
and Clue to pass the time. Finding shells and picking mussels for dinner. All of
these warm memories make it difficult to resist jumping in when I see the kids
playing Memory in the gym today.
So, what is
your favorite memory of the summer vacations you took as a kid?
