When I was a child summers were filled with siblings and make believe. We were pirates and pioneers, gypsies and jugglers. There were puppet shows and plays. The entire out of doors was our playground, from the train tracks that ran over a creek to the docks at the lake with rafts and tadpoles. In addition to firefly and toad catching, there was the summer vacation.
Many of you reading this might be reminiscing about trips to Disney Land, the beach or maybe the Grand Canyon. Not so with my family. Our vacations were spent in grave yards, courthouses, the occasional museum and family reunions. Some of you now have confused looks on your faces, but some few, some special few will be nodding and saying to yourself, “Ah. Genealogy.”
Yep. My mom was into Genealogy. For those of you unfamiliar with the word it means, basically, to research ones roots, ones family tree. I had, at the tender age of ten, been to more gravesites in obscure parts of the Midwest than most people will drive by in their entire lives. I learned how to make a gravestone rubbing with charcoal and onion paper, and I watched not one, but two gravestones on separate occasions fall on my older brothers. Ah, good times.
The family reunions were usually okay as there were almost always other kids there to play with. I say usually. I went to one where most ‘covered dishes’ for the pot-luck were one of three things-Pizza Hut pizza, Kentucky Fried chicken, or a keg of cheap domestic beer. Honestly, a keg! One of my older brothers at the age of thirteen or fourteen actually got served, much to his delight and much to my mother’s chagrin. I stayed mostly in the car for that one with a sister and older brother playing cards and trying not to be noticed. My Mom collected stories and photos.
That was what it was mostly about. The stories, the record, the family. Summer after summer we copied birth certificates, death certificates and listened to elderly members of my family that I had no idea that I was even remotely related to before the day tell stories about other people that I had never met. We visited cemetery after cemetery and watched my mom record novels of information in book after book that soon filled a wall and then a room in our house.
My mom is the record keeper, that person that each family has, somewhere, that keeps track. I learned on those family vacations that history is important, even if that history is just “Hey, they were all farmers. All of them. Huh. How bout that?” These family vacations taught me two other things as well. One: Make your life memorable, because somebody somewhere is going to write it down. Make it a good one. Two: It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, as long as you love who you’re with.
My dad took us to Disney Land when I was twelve. This was after he and my mom were divorced and my dad had remarried. It became the “Trip-Not-To-Be-Mentioned” with my sister and myself. It was a miserable time. I had more fun playing cards in a car in Iowa the next summer as distant relatives got drunk outside.
The summer vacation. Make it memorable, but don’t worry about Disney Land. It doesn’t matter how much money you spend, or where you go or even what you’re doing as long as you love who you’re with.
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