MountainMornings

We are inching closer to Labor Day, with lazy summer days getting shorter and shorter. If you haven’t packed up for a family vacation yet, now’s the time. In Europe, people flee their city homes in August searching for some rest and rejuvenation. We Americans have picked up the habit of leaving later in the season, packing up the Subaru with iPads full of movies and cinching our wee ones in their car seats for multiple hours on the road.

So I was wondering, what’s your ideal summer holiday? Would you like to check into some posh resort to ride around on a golf cart chasing a small ball? Or do you much prefer standing shirtless in a small river fly fishing?

When our children were little, we headed off to Martha’s Vineyard in the Spring, dogs in tow. We shared a house in June on the wild side with my BFF Lee, who is a fierce attorney. There was no internet and no such thing as a cell phone if you can remember back that far. I had a cassette tape of Cinderella I could play in the car while the Bride turned the pages of a book…

We laughed a lot, we dug for clams, and Lee baked bread almost every day. She didn’t have a cell phone and home computing wasn’t really invented yet. In other words, she left her work behind her and was present with our families. This is the gift, the actual present we need to give ourselves when we search for a holiday.

A new friend of mine, Mary, has packed up her vintage Volkswagen bus, tricked out with lots of power and a pop-up roof, and is heading for Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Park, and then Devils Tower – almost 6,000 miles on the road. She’ll be camping and hiking for the month with her husband, her son and her 4 year old grand son! She is fearless and takes the most amazing wildlife pictures.

Not everyone can take a whole month away, but what we plan for on a vacation, and what we actually do once we get there, says quite a bit about us – as a person, as a family. Do we want to gaze out to sea at the horizon and put our feet in some sand, or do we want to learn something new and traipse around a different city?

Mary’s trip, immersing her family in the Wild, gives me serious FHE (family-holiday-envy). I will look longingly at her social media pictures, and listen to her recount the things her grandson said on a trail through wildflowers. I know this is not healthy, and that she is not your average grandma.

My Nana pickled vegetables and stored them on shelves leading down to the cellar in Scranton, PA. I have a vague memory of the Dutch kitchen door, and her black stockings and shoes, her continual love and hugs. I wonder what the Love Bug will remember about me? I know the Bride remembers the Flapper and her condo on a MN lake. She gets her grit and determination from my Mother I’m sure.

Lake house, beach house, whatever you have planned before the school year begins, I wish you safe travels. But a word of warning if you’re headed toward the Jersey Shore, avoid a certain Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster. Some people take “working vacations.”

Here are the Grands on their FL beach holiday with the Groom’s family last week!