Making Memories In a Wet and Steamy Tent

There were few things I did without as a child. I got the usual toys kids wanted-a new purple stingray with a banana seat, an Easy Bake oven, a Creepy Crawler bug machine that cooked up those spongy creatures with stretchable limbs, and that weirdly pleasant plastic odor. But what I really wanted more than anything, at least during one phase in my pre-teen years, were two things I never got-a wood-grain station wagon like all my neighbor's drove, and a camping vacation.

I envied those families who layered suitcases on the roof rack like a tiered cake, piling  blankets and pillows in the back, along with the kids and dog, turning the end of the wagon into the ultimate moving fort. Coolers filled with bologna sandwiches and Purple Passion, they'd back out of their drive, on a 70's road trip into the wilderness, while I was parked at the end of our drive sitting on my banana seat, waving goodbye.

My father could rough it up for his annual Alaskan fishing trip, but I don't think my mother ever slid her tiny body into a sleeping bag.

The closest I ever got to camping was when we dragged our sheets and blankets into the backyard one night and rigged it up between a small tree in our garden and a weathered picnic table using clothes pins to seam the bedding together. Since we weren't a camping family we didn't have sleeping bags, so we yanked whatever else was remaining on our beds, including the frilly canopies that we slept under, and fashioned a patchwork tent, with enough gaps in the ceiling to just about make out the Big Dipper.

We carried out bowls of Bugles and Funyons, soda, and long strands of red liquorice that we had braided into necklaces and bracelets before eating, found an old flash light in the junk drawer, and waited for night to fall, our mercurial voices drowning out the building winds, as we wondered what it'd be like to marry Keith Partridge and ride around on a psychedelic flower-power bus, and telling spooky stories about a crazy serial killer who slithered through backyards looking to slice up preteen backyard campers.

We were packed in our makeshift tent, the air thick with the sweet and salty smells of  junk food, and stale hot breath from prepubescent teens, and though only steps from the house, we felt as though we were nestled deep in the forest, miles from civilization.


One by one, we drifted off, five of us stuffed into that steamy tent, where silence soon filled the lengthening gaps between whispers, and we drifted off to sleep. 

We didn't make it much past midnight; the distant storm had bulldozed its way in, with claps of thunder so loud and forceful, they seemingly lifted us from our sleeping bags. And cracks of lightening so vivid, our tent exploded with intense snaps of light. Then the rain came, fast and heavy; it soaked the fabric ceiling down to within inches of our noses, all while our parents were snoring in their dry beds.

There was no heli-parents in those days-it was classic survival of the fittest. Besides, we always played outside in storms, rain or snow-lightening, wind or hail. We'd happily wash our hair under the drain spouts with lightening firing off rounds within inches of our house, threatening to reduce us to small piles of ash.

"When we were your age, we walked up and down the Avenue in all kinds of weather," our mother would say, gently closing the screen door on us. 

During one summer storm, when drains overflowed, and turned a neighboring street into a waist high river, we swam like trout through the muddy water, dodging twigs and unidentifiable objects. Our mother barely raising an eyebrow as we trudged into the house, our clothes browned from the dirty water.

"A bit of dirt won't kill you."

(Well, possibly swimming in water contaminated from run-off and sewage might have.)

We stampeded into the house, our clothes stuck to our skin, most likely the only wash of the week, besides the chlorinated pool water-which we counted as a summertime bath. And that was the last time I had camped until my kids begged me to go during one summer vacation with another mom and her son. It would be a mother son/daughter outdoor adventure they pleaded.


"Um, I'm not really the camping type," I said.

But like many of the unpleasant memories that perforate my five decades of life, this early memory was locked away in an air tight cerebral vault with a combination I'd never remember until it was pried open by a similar one. Somehow I had forgotten about that rainy summer evening, and ordered a tent, sleeping bags with an extra fleece lining for those chilly nights (how rustic and so, well,  campy), and a few mats to cushion the soft green meadow where we'd rest our bodies. I threw in a cute propane stove where we'd perk lip burning coffee like a couple of cowgirls, and a few wine glasses, because as I later found out, drinking and camping go together like cheese and crackers. 

I had always wondered why camping families look exhausted when they rolled in their driveway, eye bags down to their toes, hair in a nest, stumbling into their house, the bags of camping gear left on the roof until it positively had to come off.

And I soon found out-camping is damn hard work. It's no wonder because you're basically moving the entire contents of your house into your car, and transporting it to a 12x12 dirt patch under a canopy of sap dripping pines. And since the kids simply dissolve into the forest, there's no one to help set up camp. There's no one to haul your bags in after a long drive or flight, no comfy bed to flop on, no minibar to raid, and no private bathroom-it's a dirty, dusty, privy going, rock underneath your sleeping bag kind of pioneer experience that the kids absolutely loved.

By the time we figured out how to pitch our tent, we were on our second bottle of wine. By the time we slipped into our sleeping bags, we could hear the familiar rumblings of a distant storm gathering strength, flexing its muscles. We aimed our flash lights on the ceiling and watched as drops of rain seeped through, and woke up the next morning with a stream running through our tent.

There's nothing quite like waking up in a wet sleeping bag on a oppressively humid morning, surrounded by your kids, and knowing you're making another string of childhood memories for another generation.

The Tug of Father's Day

For the first time in a quarter of a century, I'll be celebrating Father's Day. It'll be the first time in twenty five years that I'll have to split the holiday between my husband and my father.  For years I've felt excluded by the tugs my friends' felt, splitting the day between the two men in their lives. There has always been lingering sadness on this day, a feeling of profound loss and loneliness, despite that my kids have a terrific father. And although I have always tried to make it special for him, the day only served to remind me of all I had lost.


Families are peculiar. Some are like dysfunctional clumps of personalities moving together in an amorous mass, changing, evolving, growing, and constricting, but also coming together when faced with a birth, an illness, a death; others breaking apart, drifting in different jet streams, seemingly unconnected until an event brings them together.

Ours was always an atypical family, and if they had reality TV back then, we'd be pioneers, be the first family of reality series.

We motored in a sea of dysfunction, not close, not distant, somewhere in between,  circulating in a world of scripted privilege, unaware that our family was breaking apart, until I found my mother at the foot of the staircase, her arms and legs splayed across the marble floor.

It was a little after 4.00 on a cool May morning, and somehow I had heard her garbled yells calling for help. Only moments before I had stumbled in after celebrating a friend's impending marriage. She'd been shuffling around the kitchen looking for aspirin. I told her to go to bed.

I went upstairs; she never made it.

She begged me not to call the ambulance. She'd been in and out of hospitals for the past year, her health had been gradually declining, and she didn't want to go back.

"I won't come out one day," she had said.

I think she wanted to die at home.

I sat on the floor and cried. I was alone.

I rode in the ambulance with her, holding her hand, dressed in one of my father's shirts that I grabbed from his closet, watching the life fade from her chestnut eyes as the sun rose.


She died two days later, with my sister, my brother in law, and her childhood friend Liz, taking turns stroking her arms, wiping away her tears, in between bouts of reminisce fueled laughter and grief so strong it took our breath away.

"Remember when she crawled on her belly up Dad's driveway, wearing a bandana and black clothes, and rolled off to the side into the brush when his car came racing up the long steep drive?"

"Remember when she ripped up the carpet in the family room when she decided she'd had enough of that shag?"

For a skinny little woman, with arms and legs so delicate you could probably snap them like a dried twig, she, at times, surprised us with her strength. 

When Mom died, the thin bonds that held our family together snapped.

One event triggered an avalanche so destructive it took 25 years to rebuild.

But this year, I'll be driving to New York with Sissy where we'll be cooking dinner for our father. We'll have a tri-sister sleepover with my other sister, Karen, and then we'll head back home to celebrate with our own families.

Yes, her name is Karen, too. 

And that's another story.


I'm not even sure what my father likes. People's tastes change. He used to love donuts, fresh home grown tomatoes with a sprinkling of salt, and crusty Italian bread that my mom's friend Agnes made. She'd drop off her bread, still warm from the oven, and within minutes, the entire loaf would eaten, with only a few scattered crumbs dusting the counter top.

But I can't remember if he prefers crullers or jelly,  how he likes his steaks cooked, or if he still eats fish, or has had pesto before.

These are the simple questions that I'll ponder while putting together a dinner menu.

I'll feel the pull of Father's Day this year, the gentle tug of wanting to be with two  fathers.

Finally, after twenty five years.

Hitting the market with the hubby

At the risk of sounding like a 1950s aproned house frau, I'm on the verge of banning the hubby from all retail establishments, including the supermarket, but excluding the liquor store. (However, this, too, maybe off limits if he keeps on fetching bargain bin wines, one step above Boone's Farm.)  I think most older men should be banned, too, and I don't think I'm alone judging by the "Oh, sister, I know what you mean," looks from my fellow shoppers as they push their carts up and down the grocery store aisles, their husbands on a grocery market lam.

The eye rolls say it all.

It's funny how such a measured gesture perfectly captures the universal "holy shopping carts on fire, I should have left him at home" kind of feeling.


Like most "older" men, he simply disappears in the grocery store. He wants his own cart, and then takes off like a toddler in a playground. I lose him in the dairy section, between the blocks of Cabot's cheese and free range eggs, and he surfaces again in meats, balancing half a steer on his shoulder.


"This should do us for a bit." he says.

I used to go shopping alone, but over the past few years, my husband's been riding shotgun, his idea of spending quality time together since the kids are now orbiting in their own hormone filled black holes. He refuses to go the mall and I'm delighted since within minutes of his arrival, he's shuffling past stores, arching his back, with a pinched  look on his face.

"These floors kill my back," he puffs. I don't know what it is."

I do-he hates malls.

But he doesn't mind grocery stores.

What used to take me 30 minutes for a big shop-up has gradually turned into a two hour hide and seek game.

"I'll grab a trolley," he says (that's Brit-speak for shopping cart.)

"Umm...no, that's okay. I think we're fine with one." I say, patting the handle, wondering if they make man-sized harnesses so I could tether him to my cart.

I eye the kid sized plastic trucks attached to carts, (those monstrous juggernauts that take out endcaps because they're impossible to turn), and wonder if I could convince him to awaken his inner boy and take a spin.

"Oh, yes you can fit in there, darling, I'll give you a push."

But, as I'm rifling through my handbag looking for my shopping list that no doubt is back home on the counter top, along with either my debit and Amex card (yes, I'm one of those infuriating shoppers holding up lines all across Massachusetts because I can't find my cards, dumping empty wrappers, receipts, packs of gum, lipstick, and unwrapped tampons on the counter), he's seamlessly blended into the masses of bodies pushing their carts down the aisles, his bald patch dimming like a fading beacon.

I dial him up.

 "Um, where are you?"

"I'm just pottering about," he says.

What my husband dreams our cart looked like

And that's what I'm worried about. Pottering means either he's just grabbing whatever is within his reach-a hog, cookies, candy, or the thinnest half ply toilet paper that is as effective as using a feather after a jalapeno bender.


He'll eventually meet me carrying his haul, each item balanced on top of each another, like a stack of presents, and dump them into the cart with a smile as wide as the case of canned tomatoes that now flattens the still warm French bread.

"I think we still have a case of those tomatoes from the last time we came," I'll say. And before I can bend over and hoist them out of the basket, he's off again, wandering down the aisle, pecking on his iPhone, searching for sweets.

It used to be much worse before we all got hooked up with cell phones. I'd end up going up and down each aisle, muttering under my breath, wondering how on earth I could lose him in our small market. But, by God, it was as though he had an invisibility cloak, and no matter how many times I rounded corners in that cart, and peered down those damn aisles, he was never there.

But after years of him going missing, even with the advances in technology,  I've devised a sneaky little game that keeps tabs on him, and I think, quite frankly, he likes it.

I'll pick an obscure item, one that will have him scanning the international food aisle for a good ten minutes, before he realizes it's on the other side of the store.

"What are peppadews? he asks.

What our cart looks like.....

"Oh, I'm really testing you now. I had to take it up a notch." 

"Hmmm...international food aisle, canned goods aisle, produce...give me a hint?"

And so, he wanders off to the international aisle, which unfortunately for him, has grown from being as exotic as custard from Canada to now Korean kimchi, and a thousand other canned foods, from pickled cactus to questionable animal parts. He scans each country's section, reading each label, from top shelf to bottom, traveling through South America, the Caribbean, and over to Asia-all without a passport-before he moves on.


"Oh, that was a tough one," he says, holding up the jar of peppadews like a trophy.
 "They were in the produce department. You almost got me."

These hunts give me just enough time to go full throttle down the aisles, bypassing all the crap that usually get tossed in by hubby. And they somehow fulfill his long dormant drive to hunt and provide a wholly mammoth for his clan.

We'll hook up at the register and off we'll head, snacking on the fresh un-flattened French bread on our ride home.