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Our One and Only Family Vacation
My wife and I are planning a short getaway in the near future, and as we plan, we recall other vacations we were fortunate to experience. When our two girls were young, for example, we enjoyed long weekends in the Adirondack Mountains. Then, as the girls aged a bit, we visited Disney World, we experienced a long road trip to Ohio, Kentucky, and Missouri, and we also visited different towns on Cape Cod. In recent years, too, we were truly blessed to travel overseas and enjoy a one-week cruise to Bermuda and a two-week cruise to Italy, Greece, and Turkey. All this travel stands in direct contrast to the summer vacations of my youth when we spent only one week away. Ironically, though, that one week away when I was eleven years old holds a deep and lasting place in my heart.
Why did we not go away regularly? Like most families in our Amsterdam, New York, neighborhood during the 1950s and 1960s, we simply couldn’t afford it. Dad worked as a plumber-steamfitter, and Mom stayed home with my five sisters and me. We weren’t poor exactly, but we didn’t have extra funds for a week-long adventure either. Was I jealous of schoolmates who did go away for a week during the summer? No, not at all. In fact, I sometimes felt sorry for them because when they were away, they had to miss their Little League baseball games, games that were the highlight of my summer season.
