Too soon

Last week, I was standing in the surf, enjoying the waves and ocean breeze and smell of the salt air, feeling relaxed and carefree. Then my youngest son, the boy who is still young enough to want to snuggle in the evening, the child who will still hold my hand, the one who will still ask me to read aloud to him, the baby of the family, strode into my line of vision. He stood there with his skimboard, shaking his wet hair from his eyes and intently watching the waves to catch one just right.

And suddenly, it hit me. It's happened again, to one of my darling children.

He's turning into a teenager.

Pages

We don't have much camping equipment – just two tents, an ice chest, and a bunch of flashlights which are always missing batteries. We've never gotten around to buying sleeping bags for everyone in the family: we take along sheets and blankets off our beds at home. We still have the camp stove we borrowed from my parents a few years ago and never returned, so I bring that along with six bowls, six spoons, and six cups from our kitchen cupboards. I always mean to be prepared and make a list and be organized, but it seems that we are always packing in some kind of heat wave, and I am too hot to be bothered, so we end up just tossing stuff into the car until it's full and then leaving.

We're usually the most ill-prepared family at any campgrounds. I'll walk by other sites and see families with ice chests full of food and drink, with niceties like tablecloths and citronella candles, with chairs and screen rooms, with elaborate meals they've made over the fire. Our site always looks a bit bare in comparison.

The one preparation we do usually make is a trip to the bookstore to make sure every family member has a few books to bring on the family vacation. When it comes to ensuring harmony, books are far more important than sleeping bags or bug spray. When we hit a rainy day, and we're crammed into a car or tent, and we start driving each other crazy, it's important for each person to be able retreat and find space between the pages of a good book.



My daughter reading on a cool, overcast day at the beach.

Little cat feet

One afternoon during our vacation, a change in weather brought a thick mist across the sand. The red lifeguard chair and a bright beach umbrella stood out against the greyness. The other people on the beach became dark silhouettes. My daughter went walking along the shore and disappeared into the whiteness. Waves came crashing out of grey sky, the foam especially white against the sand. The salty moistness touched my arms, my neck, my face. It made my hair curly.

Shaggy Hair was digging a hole for himself near the water's edge. For some reason, as my kids have gotten older, they've lost the urge to build castles and instead just dig big holes that they can climb into. Sitting on the sand near him, I watched With-a-Why skimboard across the wet sand, listened to the surf, and admired the way the fog blurred the edges of the world.



With-a-Why trying out the skimboard, with encouragement from Boy in Black.

Return to Ocean State

When my kids were little, summertime parenting meant pitching a tent and then sitting in the woods with my journal while the kids climbed up rocks, threw pine cones at each other, and played tag through the trees. My daughter was a week old the first time I took her camping. Now that my kids are older, with responsibilities and social lives, we don't camp as much as we used to, but more than ever, I appreciate it when we can get away from home and spend the week outdoors.

One of the places we used to go every August was Huge Campground With a Pine Forest near the beaches of Ocean State, a place I first came to as a teenager. We haven't been there in more than a decade, but we returned last week to find the campsite just the same. We set up our tents under tall white pines that covered the sandy soil with orange-brown pine needles.

Trying to please six different people means all kinds of negotiations, but over the week, we tried to figure out activities that would make everyone happy. We went to the beach, of course, to swim and skimboard, to fly kites and dig holes in the sand, to play frisbee and gather seashells. We took a long walk along a cliff above the ocean. We played minature golf, visited an old seaport, and stopped at scenic overlooks.

One morning we found a place that rented two-person kayaks, and we went paddling through the ponds and tidal flats near the breachway. We saw birds of all kinds, and seaweed that looked like snakes curled on the sandy bottom. When we hit sandbars, we'd climb out into the shallow, warm water and pull the boats, a situation that led inevitably to races and water fights and all kinds of antics. I saw Boy in Black running and leaping onto the back of his kayak, the way you would with a toboggan, and With-a-Why spent more time swimming than paddling. By the time we returned to the rental hut, we were all soaking wet and the boats were filled with brackish water.

At night we built campfires. We didn't have any chairs, of course, since trying to wedge six people, two tents, and three guitars into one vehicle leaves room for almost nothing else, but we pulled the picnic table over to the firepit. Boy in Black sat on top of the picnic table with his guitar, his long legs dangling down. My daughter and With-a-Why spread a beach towel over the sticky sap on the bench and settled there with flashlights and books. My husband and I shared the ice chest, which made a small but sturdy bench, while Shaggy Hair Boy balanced his self and his guitar on a pile of logs.

We'd picked a secluded site, with the pine woods behind us and no other tents nearby. If any other campers objected to the soft guitar music drifting through the pines, they didn't say so. I told my boys I can remember my father and his friend Trumpet Guy having a jam session in this very spot one time when we were camping here with Picnic Family, and no one objected to that either. So each day ended quietly, with guitar music or the sound of falling rain, before the kids retired to their tent to play cards and read books by flashlight, and my husband and I retreated into our own tent to talk over the day and make plans for the morning.



Shaggy Hair Boy, listening to the waves.

To the ocean

We're packing the beach towels and the beach umbrella, the tents and the ice chest, and whatever camping equipment we can fit into our vehicle. It's time for our August vacation, the week we traditionally take with just the six of us. Our house is so often filled with extras or extended family that it's nice once each year to spend a week with my husband and kids.

I don't know how much longer this kind of vacation will be possible: this coming year is my daughter's senior year in college. It's slowly starting to hit me that my kids just might grow up and move away someday. Then again, I still take vacations with my parents. And Schoolteacher Niece, who recently finished her grad work at Big City School With a Name That Sounds Like a South American Country, just accepted a job teaching in Snowstorm Region, proof that maybe not all of the younger generation will desert us.

August means that soon my oldest two will be moving back to campus, leaving the house much quieter. But for another week at least, we'll all be together, jammed in a car or tent or huddled in the tiny shade of a beach umbrella, arguing about where to go next or what activity we want to do. We'll swim in the ocean, take a ferryboat to an island where we'll rent bikes, walk marinas and fishing piers in the evening, hike along a cliff, explore an old seaport, fly kites on the beach, sit by the campfire at night, and play cards in the tent long after dark. Boy in Black says there will be some Ultimate Frisbee playing as well, even if the teams are small. One more week of camping and swimming and sunshine before it's time to think about fall semester.

Blue light

Earlier this week, when I was vacationing in the mountains with my husband, I woke early one morning and slipped quietly out the back door of the inn. The rocking chairs on the porch were empty, although still clustered in friendly little groups, with empty glasses sitting on the porch railing. The grass was wet as I crossed the lawn to get to the shore. A mist drifted over the surface of the lake like the breath of friendly dragon.

I like a little time to myself in the morning, while the air is still chilly enough for me to need a fleece and the light is blue. How quiet the docks seemed, with all the canoes pulled up, the motorboats tied fast. I felt as if I were the only person in the world as I wandered along the edge of the lake, watching as the breeze made ripples through the eel grass. When I returned to the inn, I could see a light in one of the windows: someone just waking. My sneakers were soaked, and the bottoms of my jeans as well, and I felt chilled through as I climbed the crooked wooden stairs to the room where a dry bed and warm husband awaited me.

Lakeside

At Bryophyte Lake, my husband and I walked a trail that goes around the lake, often so deep into the woods that we couldn't see the lake at all. We followed one trail down to a wooden dock where a little boy was fishing. The boy seemed eager for company so I stopped and chatted with him, while my husband went off to figure out why the trail markers didn't seem to match the map we had. The boy kept telling me how good the fishing was and how much he knew about fishing. He was still bragging about his fishing experiences when he pulled up his hook and noticed the worm missing. Without missing a beat, he turned and said to me, "Will you put another worm on for me? I don't know how."

It's been years since I put a wriggling earthworm on a fish hook, but I guess it's one of those skills you never lose.

We figured out which trail to take and continued on our way, leaving the boy to fish by himself. At the far end of the lake, a low wooden bridge made a nice place to sit in the sun. Taking off our socks and hiking boots, we put our feet into the water. Three women came by on a mountain bike: the first one hesitated at the beginning of the bridge, but my husband cheered her on, and all three negotiated the bumpy on-and-off ramps just fine. Another woman walked by with a beautiful dog, who leaped into the water and then came out to shake water all over us. A man went by in a kayak, skimming peacefully along the surface. But mostly, we were alone in the sunshine with our thoughts and dreams.

Sheets of Egyptian Cotton

The trailheads in the mountains are marked by little brown signs with yellow letters, signs sometimes hidden by the lush summer vegetation. Earlier this week when my husband and I were looking for a trailhead, we got lost and ended up instead in the backyard of a big summer resort. Like many of the resorts in the mountains, the manicured lawns and gazebos and gravel pathways that could be considered the front of the resort face the lake, and if you come by car, you can see people carrying in food, hanging out laundry, and taking care of all the details that the guests take for granted.

I'm used to driving into these places with my parents: my father played at many of these resorts during summers in the 50s, and he will strike up a conversation with anyone who remembers those days. As a former employee, he never hesitates to walk around and take a look. But my husband was seeing some of these resorts for the first time.

"I know what it reminds me of," he said. "The movie Dirty Dancing. It's as if these places are imitating that corny movie."

Of course, it's the other way around. Some of these resorts were built long before that movie, and Hollywood has imitated them. Still, I couldn't help feeling, as I looked at hundreds of white bedsheets hanging in the sunshine, that we had stepped into a movie, or perhaps a bygone era. I've spent years camping in the mountains, in tents that always end up smelling like wet sneakers, and clean cotton sheets that have been hanging all day in the sunshine and mountain breezes seemed like the ultimate luxury.

Childhood landscape

When I was a kid, I sometimes came to the mountains with Kindergarten Friend and her family, to stay in their camp on Snowshoe Lake. We'd play with her cousin and her sister at the big table by the side window, or we'd put on plays in the woodshed down near the dock. We'd go out in the lake in an aluminum rowboat, or one time we made some kind of strange pulley system in the woods with yarn and clothespins and pieces of paper with messages on them. I can remember walking to town on a sunshiny day to buy maple sugar candy and these "Seek-a-Word" puzzlebooks, filled with pages of scrambled letters you had to search through to find words. For some reason, we loved "Seek-a-Words" and they became a staple of our own puzzlebooks when we created them.

Kindergarten Friend's camp is still on that lake, and she comes there now with her husband and kids. The town – which consists mostly of a general store, a church, and a post office – looks the same as it always did. Even the maple sugar candy, shaped like a maple leaf and packaged against red paper, tastes the same. As we crossed the bridge that leads into the town, I took this photograph. The lake itself, with a 99-mile shoreline, is spectacular, but I've always liked the view in the other direction: those creeks that go meandering off to meet the smudged sky.

Raindrops

Too much rain in the woods can be dreary, but an afternoon of rain can be a welcome change from bright sun. It felt cosy to drive in the rain, just the two of us, stopping to get trail mix and juice at the little store in town. I like canoeing in a light rain or hiking in the rain, and the misty way the lake looks on rainy days. The roof outside our window at the inn was metal and amplified the sound of the rain, which made the bed inside the room that much cosier as we snuggled at night.



View through a rain-splattered windshield.