Category Archives: Growing up

Growing up, PSA, Remembering

Blog Action Day

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Today is Blog Action Day when bloggers are writing about one important issue – the environment. All our blogs have different agendas and readerships, but the idea is to write a post which pertains to some environmental issue. To learn more or read other Blog Action Day posts, just click on the image to the left. Some friends from the blogroll who are also participating include Pure Florida, Hawk Owl’s Nest, and Dharma Bums.

Seeing as I’m not much in the mood for preaching at you about something you hopefully already feel is important, I thought I would instead reminisce a bit about one of the ways that, as a kid, I was introduced to the great outdoors. I grew up in the 70’s and most years we took family vacations that revolved around the water – either the ocean or a lake up north, often in Maine or upstate New York. There were no fancy hotels that I remember, just a cabin in the woods or, most often, our pop-up camper. Just looking at these pics brings back happy memories. I loved that camper! The drive to wherever we were going seemed to last forever, as did the anticipation for the trip. The morning of leaving, my dad always seemed to leave all the details of getting the camper ready to the very last minute – hitching that thing up to his beautiful shiny Cadillac was quite a feat and never seemed to go right. He was always very grumpy starting out on vacation.

I don’t remember very many specific details about any of these trips – only the feel of the sun, the sand that was always in my kid-sized bed in the camper, the year we drove to Florida in the rain with the leaky window in the Cadillac and those huge bugs! My mom loved to sunbathe and spent days by the water slathered in oil, while dad with his freckled-skin had to be careful. I tagged along with my big brothers, building sandcastles or tooling around in this big orange boat. Fun times!

When I was older I went camping with the girl scouts or later with friends. I haven’t been camping in years, but have all the gear in the attic, purchased years ago in hopes of getting the DH to give it a try. I love camping and think it’s a great way to spend time together as a family and enjoy the outdoors. There’s something about sleeping outdoors with all the sounds and smells of nature that is a great learning tool, I think, in that it replaces fear for the outdoors with comfort and curiosity. A good thing for kids today who spend so much time indoors or glued to some electronic gadget. Leave all the stuff behind and sit around a campfire and tell stories instead!

The NWF sponsors the Great American Backyard Campout each year in June. Pitch a tent or set up that old pop-up in your driveway and get a kid playing outside for a change.

Growing up

A motley crew

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I dug around in that huge tub of *stuff* from my dad’s looking for an idea of what to write about tonight and came up with this pic from my sixth birthday party. I’m the one wearing the tall crown and pigtails. We were a motley bunch of kids! These were all my little friends from the neighborhood. I’m kind of amazed that I can remember all of their names 30 years later, even though I’m not in touch with any of them. Once in a while I run into the tall girl standing behind me on the left; her dad still lives with his new wife across the street from where we grew up. My husband and I visit them at Christmastime and bring cookies.

My birthday is in June, so I always had a party in the backyard. I don’t remember doing much of anything besides running around in the bushes and eating ice-cream sandwiches. I laugh remembering that, considering the highly-orchestrated birthday parties people have for their kids nowadays. It must have been enough for my mom to have 8 or 9 of my friends over at the same time and keep us from getting into very much trouble.

Growing up, Small truths

No room for more

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I came home from my brother’s this past weekend with a humongous tub of family memorabilia that had been in storage since we sold my dad’s house after he passed away. I’m having a good time going through all the old photos that I haven’t seen for quite a few years.

Most of the stuff in the huge tub had been kept forever in the bottom of the china cabinet in my dad’s dining room – that’s where my mom always kept the baby albums, homemade cards from us kids, the report cards and graduation certificates and all the other stuff of a family’s memory.

My brother being the pragmatist (and the one paying the bill for storage) has decided that we need to finally figure out what to do with the things we haven’t been able to bear to throw away or to give away. None of us has the room or the need for a dining set, or two bedroom sets, or another side chair and end table.

What do we do with these things that we grew up with; what do we do with the sentiment attached to them? Throw it away? Give it away to some faceless stranger that has no sense of the lives and stories that are a part of each piece of furniture? Will the little girl who ends up with my canopy bed care about the dreams that visited me in that bed, or how I used to hide beneath it when my parents had an argument? Will another family share Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner over our dining set and know how my mother loved that table or how my dad re-tooled it in later years as his computer desk? Do these memories matter to anyone but us? Of course they don’t; they’re just things after all. But knowing that doesn’t help with the feelings of guilt.

My mom liked to pose photos like this one, with us lined up from eldest to littlest. According to the date on the back of the pic I was 3 and Kevin, the eldest, 13 and Brian in the middle at 11. I’m guessing it was taken at Holmdel Park where we used to go sledding and I think the dog may be Rufous (or is it Fritz?), who I don’t remember but for pictures of him.

Growing up

“One more time”

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Naturewoman invited us to share pics from our childhood, so I’m posting this one that I scanned a while back for another post that I never got around to putting together. I’m the goofy-looking kid in the hat, my mom and grandma are there with me. The pic was taken outside the church I grew up attending; maybe it’s Easter Sunday and I think the year was 1976, so I was six years old.

My mom in this picture looks exactly the way I remember her; tall and shapely and pretty. She passed away five years later with that nice figure. My grandma died while I was in college. She was always a robust woman – made of good German stock – but with age she became thin and frail.

We used to go on vacations with my mother’s family to Maine and we spent all the holidays at my grandparent’s in North Jersey, but I don’t remember much of that. I do remember as a teenager going to visit and sometimes spending a weekend with my grandparents. My grandma and I drank tea together and played cards. I always wanted her to teach me how to crochet and play canasta, but we never got to that. I grew up and she got old and then she was gone. I do think of her whenever I fix myself a cup of tea or sing *Happy Birthday* to someone. We always had to sing *Happy Birthday* twice when grandma was there, because just as the song was finishing grandma would say, “one more time” and we sang it again. Silly! My brother Kevin reminds me of this now, because his voice is the one saying, “one more time” in a perfect imitation of grandma’s voice.