 Frequently, vacations give us permission to be and act in ways that are neither grown-up, nor appropriate. In July of 1987, the Schaefer family (i.e. Bud, Shirley, Auntie, Grandma Beyer, Jeff, Randy, Brad & me, although I wasn't officially a Schaefer, yet) headed to Dale Hollow Lake in West Virginia to spend a week on a houseboat. I'd never been on a houseboat before and was very excited! The main purpose of this kind of vacation is to get away from civilization and spend lazy days in the company of people you love (and I strongly suggest if you decide to take a trip like this, you make certain you ADORE the people going with you because out on the lake, there's nowhere to get away from them). Back then cellphones were still the size of bricks and very few people had them, but we left behind phones, TV, air conditioning, schedules, and stress, trading them for a big ol' lake and a whole lot of leisure time! We brought with us oodles of good food, decks of cards, some board games, fishing equipment (so I could attempt to teach my future husband how to fish, which was an EPIC fail) and plenty of alcohol! Our days consisted of swimming, skinny dippin', drinkin', solving the world's problems, napping, cheating at cards, cruisin' towards the Dam, and generally being silly (okay, I'm the only one who cheated at cards but HEY, I have the worst poker face ever, so I have to cheat if I want to win and Dad was delighted to help me hone my skills of deception). Each day we came up with a theme like "Wear A Red Hat" Day and my favorite, "Inside-Backwards-Upside Down" Day!
The day we stopped to refuel was "Inside-Backwards-Upside Down" Day and all the ladies got off the boat to hit the souvenir shop at the dock, while Dad filled the boat up. Brad stood on one of the piers, watching disgustedly as a little boy of about three, wearing nothing but some Superman underwear, leaned over and fished with a piece of string and a pack of bologna! He had already caught three small fish and about half a dozen more swam at the surface near his piece of string. Once we were done shopping for trinkets, we came to stand with Brad and wait for Dad to finish up. "Mom, were you getting some strange looks while you were shopping?" I asked her, frowning. "I was," she replied. "Couldn't figure out what was wrong with those people in there," she told me. "Well," Brad piped in, "they probably thought you'd all just escaped from the looney bin!" "What? Why?" I wanted to know. He pointed to the top of Grandma's bathing suit. The skin tone foam cups were on the outside of her dark blue suit! We all roared with laughter! We'd ascended on that shop with tags hanging out, crotch liners showing, etc. and not a single one of us had noticed how utterly ridiculous we looked...certainly as if we'd stopped taking our meds LONG ago! Mom, Dad, Auntie and Grandma Beyer are all gone now and I'm so very grateful to have a host of fun memories of them, like this one, to soothe the ache of missing them so much. And it's okay that we live in Crazy Town; they know us here and we fit right in!
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About The Author
I grew up in rural North Carolina. When I was only nineteen, I moved away and became a military wife. My only aspiration at that tender time in my life was to create an adult life that "fixed" all of the "injustices" of my childhood. Secretly, however, I wanted to reach for the sky! I wanted to be a writer and find ways to "save the world" (my mother used to say, "You have Save the World Syndrome".). Mostly, I wanted to matter. Archives
August 2021
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