Ah, the family vacation - a rite of summer. Memories that become as much a part of us as our tissue, blood and bones.
Our summer vacations always entailed the family station wagon breaking down on the way to see our grandparents and our father trying to fix the car with whatever was at hand. When our windshield wiper inexplicably broke during a thunderstorm, my father stopped at a farm stand to buy a potato. He bit the potato in half and smeared the windshield with the potato on the theory that potatoes were somehow water-repellent.
When that didn't work, and with the windshield now completely obscured by rain and potato, he tied one of my brother's shoelaces to the end of the wiper, rolled down the window, and drove with his left hand outside, manually operating the wiper using the shoelace. Where was my mother in all of this? She was reaching around behind her, swatting her hairbrush in the general direction of the backseat to quiet the chorus of protests by my brothers and me.
Given this, you may wonder why I chose to visit these people this summer, and to subject my own children to them.
It was Henry's first trip to Cumberland, my hometown. We stayed at Rocky Gap, a lovely lakeside resort that I have been visiting for more than 30 years, the kind of place where kids under 10 still eat for free and the service is slower than an upside-down box turtle.
Several of my best friends from elementary and middle school still live in Cumberland and almost all of them have daughters. Sherri brought 5-year-old Elle and her toddler brother Ben Ben down from New York. Julie was visiting from Florida with Cameron. Kerry came with 7-year-old Ila. Samantha brought Grace. And Emma and the girls, who last saw each other a year ago at Rocky Gap, immediately reconnected and formed a girl gang. Shawn, who is an adoring auntie, and Heather, who had the sense to let her kids stay on their bedtime schedule, joined the rest of us for drinks lakeside while Scott and Samantha's husband watched the girls swim and my parents stayed with the boys in our room.
We got caught up on each other's lives over shots and homemade birthday cake. I love these women. They oxygenate my blood. Heather has her mother's hilarious sense of humor and could win a prize for sexiest preacher's wife. Julie, who still loves a good time, just like high school, was the prettiest homecoming queen in our history and is still clueless about how gorgeous she is. Kerry is one of the most passionate people I've ever met, especially after a few beers. Samantha is mother to everyone, loving our children as if they were her own and raising Grace to be a little lady worthy of her name. Shawn is a glamour girl on the outside, but on the inside, she's a country girl more loyal than a St. Bernard. And Sherri is the closest thing I have to a sister, and I'm not convinced an actual sister could be better.
We have been there for each other through the deaths of parents, the births of children, the ends of marriages, the beginnings of new relationships. I don't think I could live without them. And to see our daughters playing together, bonding, having an impromptu sleep-over in Sherri's room and sneaking potato chips in bed, almost blew my heart out of my chest.
It was worth the fifteen hours spent in the car with a crying six-month-old, Emma throwing up into a grocery bag and Quinny having to go potty during a traffic jam on I-95. It was even worth the fight Scott and I had over a headrest that was obscuring the back windshield, which ended in me giving him the finger in front of the children. (In my defense, I gave him the finger so that I wouldn't curse him out loud.)
Close on the heels of this trip to Cumberland was Scott's family reunion in Westchester. The Balber reunions were started 40 years ago by ten Balber cousins who grew up in the same building in Brooklyn. There is a dysfunctional structure to these reunions, with a regular family meeting presided over by Balber Board Chairman Cousin Michael. Cousin Petey, whose real name is Stuart, is the family CFO, who reported a zero balance in the family's coffers. (Not surprising, since the sole family asset is a forty-year-old hard salami.) Cousin Marty gave a stirring presentation on Balber family origins, discovered by him at a genealogy booth at a Renaissance Fair: "You thought we were Russian, but we're Swiss, you dummies," he said, unveiling a computer-generated Balber family crest. In the center was a large palm tree, possibly foretelling the ultimate migration of an important contingent of Balbers to Miami.
Along with being chairman, Cousin Michael is also the only Balber who can discern whether a new Balber has the Balber Thumb. Cheers erupted during the Friday night buffet when he declared that Henry does, indeed, have the Balber thumb. And with that, Henry was pressed, literally and figuratively, into the bosom of the Balber family, in the form of the ample cleavage of Cousin Irene.
As Henry exulted in being passed from Balber to Balber, falling asleep in Cousin Dara's arms, snuggling into Cousin Dossie's neck, it dawned on me that my boy is part of this tribe. He belongs to them every bit as much as he belongs to me, a fact made starkly clear when the family's matriarch, Great Aunt Joy, wept when she saw that Henry had the same birthmark as her beloved brother Genie, Henry's grandfather, now dead more than twenty years.
When we arrived home on Sunday, I picked up the Sunday Times and read an article in the Business section about happiness. The one thing the happiness experts agree upon is that stuff doesn't make you happy, strong relationships do.
And I thought about Scott and me, imperfect parents, sometimes struggling partners, who accidentally gave our children the one thing this summer that may truly make them happy: membership in a clan. And then I thought about how we knew to do this. For me, it began with a station wagon and a potato.
This entry is dedicated to Chaney Dakota Spring, who gave 16 years of faithful service as Zealand Family Dog. She is catching sticks for the angels now. Rest in peace. Good girl.
