Every summer, as far back as I could remember, we did the same thing. One week down the Jersey shore and Labor Day weekend up in the Adirondack Mountains, at the reclusive vacation spot of Lake George. We brought Prissy up to the mountains with us. She really doesn’t like the trip, but she would love sniffing the fresh new ground around the cabin we would get every year.  One year mom decided to make growth mark on an old tree. 

“This tree is probably 100 years old,” mom said. “And it’ll probably keep standing tall and straight, way after we’re all gone.” So that’s what we did. Every year since we were little tikes we would go to this tree and mom would put our heads flushed to the trunk and carve a marking above our heads. Eventually after many years, we would see ‘the marks of progress’ as she would call it. Ian was kind of skinny and scrawny when we were young, but all of a sudden in his teens he catapulted, while I just stayed kind of stagnant. 

“Don’t worry about that dear, boys tend to grow taller than girls in height,” mom told me. “But girls definitely grow wiser and smarter.”

“Hey, I’m right here you know!” Ian said. “I can hear you!”

The mountains were a great place to visit. The sky during the day was sultry baby blue and the air was crisp and clean. At night, you can see more stars then you could ever imagine the heavens to hold. The small body of water that runs behind our cabin is part of the Hudson River. And we bathed and fished in it!  Can you imagine? It only would go up knees high if that, and if you had a strong enough arm, you could throw a rock across to the other side. The water was so cold, clear and clean you could drink from it right out of your hand. You would think it’s not the same river that separates New York City and New Jersey. But mom showed us a map and made it very clear to us. “This is the exact same Hudson River that we cross over to go to New York.”

“Can you imagine trying to swim in that dark, mucky water up there?” Ian commented.

“Or drink from it,” I added. “Yuk!”

“It goes to show you what happens to nature when man tampers with it,” mom said summing up the conversation.

            Dad loves to rent motor boats on the lake and be captain for a day. Although one day we got stranded in a small island off of Lake George, he felt more like Captain Bligh then Captain America that day. Good thing we had a radio on the boat and the son’s owner came to rescue us a few hours later.

There also was a small quant amusement park that we would visit every year. It never changed. It looked like it got stuck somewhere in the 70’s and never recuperated. Then, at night, we would go to the downtown area. We would go to dinner, or maybe to just find an ice cream parlor, were you would sit down in the counter and the waitress would make egg cream sodas right in front of you . . . with real eggs.  It was full with tourists and locals just the same, trying to capture the essence of the place, the ‘just park your car and take a walk’ type of place. There is a friendly “hello” from everyone, even if you didn’t know them. There was also a ‘welcome’ feeling you felt in any restaurant no matter how small or what time of the day it was. It was a feeling you definitely missed growing up in a big city. But it was nice to know that every year we would come up to a place like this and for one week we too can be part of this whimsical, laid back culture.

The shore was a different trip. First of all, Prissy would stay with grandma, my dad’s mom that lived in Queens NY. They were perfect for each other – old, grey and grouchy. It was like a fight to the end of wills with those two.

“Get that filthy animal out of my bed”… “I don’t want it eating from my clean floor, it’ll get dirty and I’ll have to clean it up again!”… “How many times a day I need to take her out to crap? Holy crap! I don’t download that many times in one week!” she would say.

But then we would catch grandma in the kitchen cooking and throwing scraps to Prissy and talking to her like if she would understand what she was saying, “Now you’re not gonna say anything to that son of mine right, he won’t understand us, right Prissy, yeah girl, you want real food, that’s right girl. Not those hard rocks my son brings for ya.”  Prissy would look at her with a slight tilt of the head as to say, “Lady your fat, and the kitchen smells good, so I’m sticking to you!” Oh brother, the older they get, the harder it is to understand them. Both of them!

The shore trip is definitely a mom and dad trip. It was long and boring. Just the way they liked it! From all the great beaches in Jersey, Atlantic City, Wildwood, Seaside Heights, Asbury Park, my parents had to pick the one that had a lot of water and no boardwalk, Brigantine, NJ. It was quiet, solitaire and monotonous, but not for my parents. It was peaceful and serine for them. Funny how you can see the same thing differently when there are a few decades between people.  But the trip would always turn out alright. Ian would bring his guitar and play; I would take a book and not read. My parents made us ride the bicycles built for four. Very embarrassing! The only thing I looked forward to in Brigantine is a boy I would see every year in the same small family run motel we stayed at across the street from the beach. We stayed here every single year in the same hotel, and it never changed. (My father said he would never rent a hotel on the beach because the sound of the waves would give him insomnia. My mom told us it’s because the hotel on the side of the beach was $25 more a night and my dad was too cheap to pay it.) We've been coming here since I was 10 years old, and he’s would be here at the exact same time as we are. I wasn’t sure if he lived here or if it was his family that owned the hotel. At the beginning he was just a boy, shy and quiet. Then one summer, I really wasn’t even sure if it was him because he changed so much.  Another year came, and I noticed that he changed even more. He was wearing different clothes and had completely shaved his head, very odd. But a few years past and that’s when I really started to notice him. By the time I was around 14, he started to get bigger, taller, tanner and stronger, a definite hottie in my book. And now, he’s the motel’s lifeguard. He could guard my life anytime, anyday, anywhere.