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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Remembering When

There was a time when writing was more than a hobby or a "job", it was both an art and a custom. Look back to the Victorian days when ladies spent time being schooled in the finer arts of etiquette, fashion, fine cooking, needlearts and keeping a regular and proper diary.

Envision refined ladies dressed in fine silks and satins with large dangling curls in their hair, sitting with their full skirts at a desk or bedside table scribing the days events. The ink well smells of oils that emanate the room, give the task an air of archival significance. The words written in most delicate hand writing style were composed in proper handwriting with upper and lower case rules observed, syntax to perfection, sentences in proper order, "i"s dotted and "t" 's crossed.

Poetry and superb prose described the days events along with the hopes and dreams of a young woman's life, the memories of a grand ole dame, and the secrets of both...contained on exquisite papers hidden under lock and key...only for the eyes of "Dear Diary".