This is how it was: Every day, after work, my father would put his quit-smoking money into a bank, which he kept on top of his dresser. He’d walk straight into his bedroom and empty his pockets. The bank was big, some kind of mongrel dog, a porcelain thing my mother shook her head at. On her dresser sat an Infant of Prague.When the bank was full, and this took a long time, a year, sometimes two, when my father couldn’t squeeze in one more dime, he would shout for me and say, “It’s time!’’ And I’d come running, no matter if I were watching the “Mickey Mouse Club’’ or “American Bandstand,’’ because this was the Big Day.
My father quit smoking when I was 8, so how often did we do this? Two, three, four times?
We’d sit on the bed and he would ceremoniously remove the black rubber stopper from the bank’s bottom and out would pour a stream of nickels and quarters and dimes and dust.
We’d hoot and holler and breathe in the twin smells of copper and cash, and my father would grin and say things like, “Wait ‘til your mother comes home. Wait ‘til she sees all this,’’ as if we were sitting on a pile of gold in the middle of Ali Baba’s cave and not in the small bedroom of a humble house with a 30-year mortgage.
We made piles of coins on the chenille bedspread, then counted and added. The sum was always around $300. This was our vacation money, and once it was determined exactly how much we had, we were good to go.
Mostly we went to New Hampshire, because my mother loved Echo Lake, and my father loved making my mother happy. It was that simple.
But maybe it wasn’t.
Maybe they wanted to go to New York, but $300 wasn’t enough. Or to Disneyland, but they could never afford that. Maybe he couldn’t get time off when she could. Maybe they had problems getting me out of school. Maybe they planned the trip around motel deals and the lowest rates of the season
I’ll never know. To me it seemed as if one day we were giddily counting change, and a few days later we were standing on top of Mount Washington posing for pictures.
But that’s a child’s perspective.
The child is a grown-up now, and the adult she’s become has been salting away money, not in a bank on a bureau like my father, but in a bank in my town. I did the math a month ago. Let’s go on vacation, I yelled.
And sure enough everyone yelled back. A vacation? Great! But when and where? Everyone is busy. Everyone works. Everyone has kids. Everyone has commitments and appointments and obligations. And no one can just pack up and go.
“February’s not good for us,’’ my son said. “We’re moving.’’
“March isn’t good for me,’’ my daughter said. “It’s ‘Cabaret’ month and there are shows every weekend.’’
“April’s out for me,’’ my husband chimed.
May? It’s a possibility but, not the second and third week.
Two years ago, on our first and only family vacation, we went to Walt Disney World, some of us for four days, some of us for two. It was magical even though half of us were felled by a 24-hour bug.
I want to go back to Disney World, but someone says beach and someone else says golf and someone else says, “Where can we go that is all-inclusive?’’
Back in the day when rolled coins could finance a trip, there were just three of us. And I didn’t have a vote. It was New Hampshire or New Hampshire.
Now there are eight adults and seven children.
“Just pick a week, Mom, and put it out there. Then we can decide the place.’’
I vote for Echo Lake. It’s a car ride. We can go to Story Land. And Santa’s Village. We can hike and fish and swim and ride horses. And we can go in June or July or August.
And when we’re all together, what I’d really like to do is drive to the top of Mount Washington and pose for a picture with this sprawling, hard-to-get-under-one-tent, amazing family that I love.
Source: boston.com
