I Remember those Wonderful Vacations with my Family

Photo Credit: Cheryl Lynn Gardner, a/k/a The Midnight Writer

It seems the days of my youth have all but faded and I am left with far off memories. I am clinging to those memories with every fiber of my being, Dear Diary, for I fear they may disappear like the loved ones who are in my cherished memories.

There is one particular part of my younger days that I recall more vividly than others. I’m not sure why that is, it is just so. As a young girl, Mother loved to take vacations and her planning all year for that ultimate vacation trip was as much fun as the actual event. Mother sure knew how to put a special trip together. I often thought to myself how she would have done well as a travel agent.

Now don’t misunderstand me, I am happy to have kept all her talents for myself and my siblings. My father would agree for he enjoyed these trips equally as much as I did. Dad worked very hard all year so we could take one or two weeks, on a good year, to drive off to a dream vacation site that offered plenty of interesting places to go sightseeing while providing enough entertainment wherever we camped.

Just so you don’t get the wrong impression here, we did not go “primitive camping” as I would call it. Mother preferred cabins so we rented one in a state park. She spit shined the cabin on our first day of arrival so day one of vacations was always like a spring cleaning day. Mother was particular about where her family would eat their meals and where they would lay their head at night. She would clean furiously, with all of our help, of course until she was satisfied. Her standards were tough when it came to clean and I learned how to achieve her satisfaction level. (I had to pass a few inspections making my way through my chore list!)

This spring cleaning extravaganza taught us to appreciate that vacation all the more while it preserved our work ethic and our gratitude for sanitation. Mother never let her family be neglected. It was against her principles.

Our rewards for such hard work were more than gratifying, as I remember it. The next morning in the cabin I awoke to the smell of a campfire burning in the fireplace, pancakes on the griddle, eggs frying and even bacon or sausage filling the air. The tea kettle whistled like an alarm clock and I was ready to share a hearty breakfast with my family in our cozy rented cabin in the state forest. You see, I knew from experience of previous years that the breakfast was only the beginning of an itinerary of exciting things to do and see the rest of the day.

I always ate this first breakfast with a hearty appetite and anxiously helped clean up so we could get on with the first adventure of a summer vacation dream. I thank Mother for the fond memories of life’s simplest satisfactions that she planted firmly and deeply within my heart.

I will always miss her but I have these fond memories to cherish and they will carry me through whatever years I have to spend on this earth. My only wish is that I could share these wonderful times with my family.

Come back and read my diary for I will share more about our summer vacation memories. There is still swimming, and baseball, hiking, berry picking and bear spotting to cover.

The Midnight Writer

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As Fall Advances

Dear Midnight Diary,

As the temperature chills and the autumn leaves begin turning colors of melancholy, so does my heart turn inwardly to prepare for the winter of introspection. I am ready for the warm fires by the hearth. Aromas of the hot apple cider that Mother used to make surface in my memory. How I long to sit by the fireside and listen to Mother's stories as we sip the hot cider from Grandmother's press.

It was a good apple harvest this year. The cider press is an antique from my great-Grandfather's youth. I love it so. Melancholy impresses upon me ever deeper as I long to return to those days of my youth. The family was much closer in those days.

Mother encouraged us to write poetry and practice our needlework and baking skills in those days. Mother was a wonderful poet, though she never boasted.

If a heart could burst with longing, mine is surely ready as I think of the dear ones that have traveled on from this earth life. I miss them so. Some days I wonder how I am able to continue living without my parents and grandparents. Life with them was so filled with the art of living.

These days seem to be filled with remembering. Perhaps that is the great lesson and hence, the irony of life. Years advance much too rapidly in my opinion. Youth is fleeting when all those days with a bustling growing family enriches the moments beyond overflowing. Too fast flown away they come and fly more quickly than the sparrows who seek a far off refuge in winter, not seen again until springtime. In this case, the spring time comes when I leave this earth to join my loved ones in that far off place.

The apple cider is still delicious but the fire needs another log. Mother's rocking chair across the room seems to be keeping cadence with my heartbeat. I just know it is she who makes it move slowly rocking as I gaze longingly across the room where she spent many hours crocheting a new baby sweater or an afghan.

Yes indeed, Dear Diary, Mother knows when I am thinking of her even now for she comes to spend this time with me. Her Diary was filled with memories of my childhood. I joyously and tearfully leafed through the pages when she passed on. For weeks, I sat in her favorite rocking chair, the one where she sits now visiting in that invisible spirit body that used to dwell in her lovely physical frame.

I miss you mother. Dear Diary, let the secret stay with you until some day, my daughter unlocks these pages and reminisces somberly as I once did. May she smile when she gets to the part that tells how I rejoiced at her birth where I wrote in my diary how it felt to hold her tiny body close to my heart. I laughed and I cried all at once. I love you dear daughter. Please remember that we will all be together again someday.

Dear Diary, I bid goodnight as the fire is long spent and only embers remain. Mother's ink well has dried from over use and my bed with that last quilt she made for me beckons like her motherly embrace.

Till tomorrow, may God keep us all in remembrance.

The Midnight Writer