A Summer Vacation
I remember packing up the old station wagon and traveling to Acadia National Park with Mom, Dad, and my two sisters…one of which was barely able to walk. We didn’t have iPods or iPads 30 years ago, so you can imagine what a 6 hour car ride was like for a 10 year old boy….BORING! I take that back…it wasn’t completely boring. Antagonizing my 6 year old sister with wet willy’s passed the time for a while. It also earned me an ear-shattering “IF I HAVE TO PULL THIS CAR OVER, YOU ARE IN FOR IT” from my father. Needless to say I stopped.
Growing up, my family took vacations when we could. My mother and father did the best they could with what they had, which at times wasn’t much. We usually camped, even if it was only 15 miles away from our house. It still felt like another world. We did break away from camping one year and took a road trip to Florida. We were the original Griswold’s, albeit without the woodgrain paneling on the car.
I’m much older now with kids of my own. Kids…one of them is off to college in the fall and the other is a junior in high school. Not really little anymore. But since my oldest daughter was barely a year old, we have been renting a cottage in Chatham, MA for 1 or 2 weeks. My youngest daughter was 6 weeks old when she was introduced to Chatham. And for 19 years, we haven’t missed a Chatham vacation.
Over the years, we have given our daughters the opportunity to vacation elsewhere and their answer is always the same…”We want to go to Chatham”. I struggled with their answer for a long time. I have always wanted to travel farther than Cape Cod with the family…go on adventurous road trips…but I have always given in to their request. I realized a few years ago what an impact our annual Chatham vacation has had on them. They have made memories there that will last a lifetime, as have my wife and I. It is our vacation…our family vacation! It’s what we do. It’s a tradition.
Some of my best memories come from these vacations and I know my wife and daughters feel the same way. Inevitably every fall, once the kids have returned to school, they will come home and tell me where some of their friends went during summer vacation…Texas, Hawaii, Florida….and how busy they were seeing this and that, going here and there. But they are never envious of their friends. My girls know they did something special. And when I look closely I can still see the ocean’s reflection in their eyes.
Kris McElroy
Manheim New England
