Summer is here.
It's hot, it's bright, the days are long, the nights feel shorter.
The pool is a daily staple.
The days are long.
Did I mention that the days are long?
My kids are together most days, all days with me, and perhaps a few other lucky moms.
That means I get to see them fight, get along. fight, get along. Laugh, hit each other again. Fight again, scream, cry, get along. Play a game like they're best friends, fight over the game, cry.
Chase each other around, fall, cry, blame the other one for hitting, hit back, get up.
Do it all over again.
Oh, and Jaxson gave emma her first fat lip with a water gun.
Really, what a joy.
Summer makes me think about my mom.
My childhood.
I remember so many little things.
Small memories.
Imprints in my mind.
The traditional trip we would take to Lake Tahoe every summer for two months.
Where the water was pure blue liquid cold.
The kind of cold that made your skin numb and your hair freeze.
Then the hot sun made it all feel good.
The sandy turkey and cheese sandwiches, the cheez wiz on wheat thins and the smell of hot wine coolers.
The smell of pine needles and inter tubes.
Sun tan lotion and sun-in.
Do you remember Sun-in?
My mom was single.
She was not the sad single mom that men ran from.
She was the pretty, robust, slightly nuts (in a fun kind of way) mom, that all the men
fell in love with.
She had a few suitors, but she pretended they were all just "friends".
When I would say, "Mom , Michael is totally in love with you." (annoying 10 year old valley girl voice)
She would say,"oh stacie, come on, we are just friends."
Come July, we would start getting ready for our adventure.
If there wasn't enough money to go, my mom would pawn some jewelry, or write a bad check.
We had a cat, McKenzie, two dogs, Tasha and Stormy, and a parrot,Daffy.
Tasha and Stormy were black labs and Tasha was blind in one eye.
It was her left eye that was blind, and it was dark blue and glossy.
She literally ran around in circles.
Daffy was our green parrot.
My kind and moral brother Jesse, taught Daffy how to say hello and fuck you.
Daffy was mostly an asshole who either bit you, or said fuck you randomly.
They all came in the car with us.
It was a shit brown toyota corolla with a bumper sticker that said- " You had one of those days? I have one of those lives."
We would also rent a u-haul, which made the four hour ride that much longer, and only drew that much more attention.
My mom always wore cut off daisy duke jean shorts in the summer.
She would wear a t- shirt with a american flag on it or a cheesy rainbow.
She was a size double D .
She always smelled like copertone. (even in the winter.)
So there we were: my mom and her daisy dukes,
The parrot , the two dogs , the cat.
My brother was Judd Nelson from the breakfast club.
My sister was a big 80's dork with braces and a shirt that said "Bo Derek is a 10.... I'm a 15,"
And myself.
We would argue and hit each other most of the way there.
My brother called the punches to the leg muscle "charlie horses".
They hurt so bad we would laugh.
For some occasional entertainment, we held up a few paper signs with scribbled letters that said things like : honk if your horny and honk if you think we look like national lampoon's vacation.
Then there was the customary half way stop at the same restaurant.
It was called Sam's off highway 50.
My mom would always order a bloody mary with extra celery.
My sister and I would order shirley temples and my brother would tell us we were "Lame" for ordering them and make fun of us the entire lunch.
We would get back in the car and all the animals would assume their positions.
Daffy was always on my mom's shoulder.
There was bird shit all over her right shoulder.
Finally,
We would arrive with excitement and call the rooms we wanted in the cabin.
The deck was our favorite spot to hang out.
The Pine trees stood tall and green and the air was fresh and real.
The cabin was always a 70's motif and smelled like an old fire from the winter guests.
As the weeks passed, we would fill the rooms with the smells of sun tan oil, cigarettes, and barbeque steaks.
About a week into our vacation,
My mom would take us to these beautiful waterfalls.
We had to hike quite a ways to get there, it took about an hour.
Then, we would have our own watering hole to swim in and dive from the highest rock.
It was hot.
We would complain about how thirsty we were as we would hike the hills.
We never brought a cooler with water or food, just towels and sun tan lotion.
My mom carried her benson and hedges lights 100's in her jean shorts back pocket.
The pocket had a 60's patch on it that was a big crimson red pair of lips.
She pulled the cigarettes out of her pocket and slipped the cellophane wrapper off the pack.
Then she skillfully held the cellophane wrapper under one of the small waterfalls on the edge of the mountain to fill it with water.
We each got a cigarette wrapper filled with delicious, fresh spring water.
You could only faintly taste the tobacco remnants.
That ice cold fresh water quenched our thirst like no other water.
I thought my mom was a genius.
Small memories imprinted in my mind.
Ah........................ Summer.
