Summertime and the living is easy

I know that there is still a month until it is officially summer, but the weather finally got hot, Memorial Day has come with the first big picnic of hotdogs, hamburgers and potato salad, kids are counting the days til school is over. We are all thinking summer.

I'll be showing my age, but thinking summer brings thoughts of taking that long trip in the big family station wagon to visit our grandparents in Maine. That trip was something we prepared for for weeks. My mom would seal all open packages of food in the cupboards and clean the house. My dad was in charge of making sure the car was ready for a long trip - washing it inside and out, checking the 'fluids' and so on. My brothers and I would carefully consider and reconsider what we would be sure to take, since we each had only one small suitcase that we could take. The best part of the preparation was going to the bookstore and selecting one book each for the trip - we were gone the whole summer so library books were not an option. We tended towards collections of comics: BC, Peanuts, Pogo. My mother would get a few magazines. My dad didn't get any since he drove the whole way, of course. We weren't allowed to look at the books or magazines until we were actually in the car and on the road. I can remember sitting in the dark car (in the middle of the back seat on the hump of course) waiting until it got light enough to see the pages. We set out as soon after 4 AM as possible, so it was quite a wait. Of course the book was read in the first couple of hours, leaving the next 6 - 8 to travel games like trying to find all the license plates for all the states (no trucks allowed) or racing to do the alphabet from signs along the road (you can do the whole alphabet driving through Worcester either way).

When I started traveling with my own children, now driving the even longer trip from Pittsburgh to Maine to visit the grandparents, I followed the family tradition - but thought about the voracious appetites my kids had. We went to the bookstore (didn't want to risk forgetting the library books) and got stacks of books - 4-5 each kid at minimum. The books had to last the whole trip there and a few days before we could hit the local library. We would leave the books there and get another batch to travel home with. It resulted in a nice library of books there in the cottage in Maine, waiting for our annual visit, inviting us to revisit books we had enjoyed a year or two before. The comic books are a big part of travel reading still for me - Foxtrot, Pearls before Swine, Zits - as are magazines.

There is nothing more comforting than traditions. We embrace them, build on them, and hand them down to the next generation. I am sure my kids will just assume that they need to stock up on books for a trip with their future families. This time of year, I see many families coming onto the bookmobile to stock up for their trips. More movies than books nowadays, but maybe that is part of that family's traditions. As long as they think of including the library, I won't quibble.

Book: Family traditions, by Gretchen Super
Book: Traveling with children and enjoying it, by Arlene Kay Butler
Movie: National Lampoon's vacation