VACATIONS 3/26/07

When I was a kid, most of my vacations were spent on the beach. That was two weeks every summer in a rented house. Except for one disastrous time in a small motel room thanks to a heaping dose of addiction. That is to say that the grown-ups were unable to think about making reservations in a timely manner so consequently there were four of us squeezed into one motel room for the two weeks.

There was one trip to Expo 67 up in Montreal and a spider with a weird streak of yellow down her black in the sink at the mold-scented room we'd spent a night in on the way up there. I was the one who found the spider and who screamed. There was quite enough screaming going on already that particular year since my first half-sister was fairly new to the world and not even a year old.

I also bussed it up to my grands farm for a couple of weeks every August. Being able to travel alone with a lunch sack of food was heaven. The farm itself was very cool. No horses, but there were cows and a couple of dogs and some barn cats and chickens and ducks. There was the dairy which at first my grandpa had to deliver the milk to. [Years later, the dairy came to the farm in the form of a tanker. That was modernization.] And I had older cousins down the road who came and got me and took me to their friends or to a county fair or shopping.

My dad took me and another cousin to a resort outside of Lancaster, Pennsylvania for a cool week. We also visited that cousin's family down south. One year, he wanted to take me with him to Italy, but my mother had arranged our usual shore vacation and my mother "won." My dad then wanted to send me to Europe after graduation but I said no and took the money instead. I regret that now.

I justify not going by saying, "I was in the midst of my own addictions then and would have gotten arrested in Europe most probably." I was a hippie who smoked a lot of dope. I imagined myself traveling around Europe and getting high. Who knows what would have happened? I got scared. Being alone at night was problematic back then. My 'explanation' for turning down the trip was something along the lines of not being old enough to appreciate it. It was bullshit. I knew it then. At any rate, I never got another opportunity to go to Europe. I don't know if I ever will.

Husband and I have been to Montreal, which is the closest thing to a European city on this side of the Atlantic. And I am going traveling soon on my own throughout the United States because I can. I am excited about it. It may not be Europe. It is the country that I live in and I love. That will have to be "good enough" since I cannot make up completely for a missed opportunity. What I can do is what I am doing. I am seizing another opportunity to have a different kind of adventure. And a patriotic one at that.

sapphoq on life


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addiction