In Memoriam to Summer
We just went through the Memorial Day weekend and that is traditionally the start of the summer in America. We spent the weekend chasing the warmth of the desert on Saturday, did the Barbecue for friends and family out on the patio on Sunday, and did a bunch of gardening and went to our first summer movie (Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, the fifth in the Mad Max series….original, Road Warrior, Beyond Thunderdome, Fury Road, and Furiosa). Now that we are through that, its all about getting through to Labor Day with as much fun as possible. I often use the expression that we all have only so many Christmases left. Well, we also all have only so many summers left and we should all be determined to get as much out of every summer we have, especially with friends and family.
Let’s break it down. No surprise to any of this, but just how I am thinking about it. There is June, which starts on Saturday. This is wedding month for many, but we have none to attend this year. It is also mostly a month when the kids are still in school, even if it mostly has to do with field days and wrapping up and passing on activities. For the post-graduates among us, it is also usually the month when we reunion on campus. Reunions, as we all know are done every five years. I have two Cornell degrees (BA ‘75 and MBA ‘76) so my next reunion years are in 2025 and 2026. However, this year they are using reunion as the time to do a room dedication for my old friend, mentor, Dean and Professor, Joe Thomas. I have been invited for that as have decided that its an occasion I cannot miss. Therefore, I will be reunioning at Cornell this year, heading there myself since Kim has a vocal concert that weekend. For purposes of travel economy, I am spending longer in Ithaca than I would probably choose, arriving on Wednesday and leaving on Tuesday (via Syracuse), so I have lots of time to do the formal activities I want, break bread with the friends and family who are there that weekend and maybe even do some memory lane traipsing. While I will certainly pass by the house on Warren Road, and may even stop in to say hello, I will not be lingering on that topic and rather treat it like any other house I used to own and have moved on from. There is no sense in relitigating my irritation with the University on that subject.
That leaves me two weeks of June to do whatever gardening and gathering we might want to do, and then Kim and I are doing a kids gathering in Virginia Beach. This is being done at my son Roger’s urging, and its timing overlaps with his birthday (our first day at Virginia Beach). He and his wife, Valene, live on the Delaware shore and our natural travel paths don’t logically go there, so any mid-Atlantic travel has to be organized and logistically coordinated, especially since I now have one child in Brooklyn (Carolyn), one in Delaware (Roger) and one in Colorado (Thomas). We agreed almost a year ago, at Roger’s urging, to a gathering at Virginia Beach. The timespan of the visit mimics my Ithaca trip since we fly there on a Wednesday and return on a Tuesday (July 1). We (as in Kim and I) are not really big beach people, nor are we really beach attractions and rides people, but my kids are all very much into that to one degree or another. It’s the business Roger is in and certainly daughter Carolyn and her posse are very big of theme parks and rides and never seem to get enough of either. That all makes Virginia Beach a nice alternative venue for us to try out, and hopefully, doing it on the weekend before July 4th weekend will make it a little less crazy busy. It is always nice to get the whole clan together, which gets increasingly difficult as everyone builds out the structure and location of their lives.
We get back to our hilltop on July 1 and start our month-long visit by my daughter and her family for the month of July, two days later. We will kick it off with a rousing family Barbecue on July 4th at our house. We haven’t yet rounded up exactly who can and cannot attend that party, but the possible and most likely number adds to between 20-24 with 8 of those being kiddies. These gatherings always serve double duty for us and its a chance to celebrate our national Independence Day as well as Kim’s birthday (July 2nd). Normally we would blend this with some friendly neighbors, but the numbers have gone a bit too high so we will keep it to just family this time. The rest of July is pretty well scheduled out starting with three days at Disneyland (my daughter and her family are truly Disney addicts). Generally, Kim drives the gang up to Anaheim and I pick them up at the end of their stay. Kim has some appetite for Disney and I have very little. My son-in-law John will spend much of July working remotely from the guest terrace, but he would never miss a trip to Disney. We then squeeze the good old American national pastime with a day at Petco Ballpark for a baseball game between the Padres and the Atlanta Braves. In all our years here we have never been to Petco Park, which is said to be one of the best stadiums in America. After that will be a week of random beach visits including an evening S’Mores campfire on the Hotel Del Coronado beach (this summer we will be seeing Grease, a fun 70’s summer musical), a trip to the Del Mar Dog Beach, and probably a cabana day at the beach with a picnic if we can figure something out. The third week of July is reserved for horseback riding camp for the girls, something they got a taste for during our family reunion trip to Utah last summer.
We end July with a roadtrip to Denver to visit my son Thomas and his wife, Jenna. We are all anxious to see their digs in Denver, where they moved to a few months ago. I have rented a minivan to make sure we all fit comfortably and while we thought about taking Buddy (still somewhat possible), I’m betting Kim will vote for another stay with dog sitter Colean for him. We will drive to Las Vegas and have dinner with my sister Barbara and hubby Dave, but also perhaps nephew Jason and his daughter Kaitlin. We will spend one night at the Lodge at Red River Ranch in southern Utah for old time sake before heading across the Bicentennial Highway to Durango for another full western experience. We will go to Grand Sand Dunes National Park and Pikes Peak before getting Denver, where we will send Carolyn and family back to Brooklyn to prepare for their August trip to London to see Taylor Swift at Wembley Stadium (I am speechless about the whole Swifty phenomenon, as opposed to the whole Disney phenomenon…and I used to think of myself as an obsessive individual…)
Kim and I will come back to our hilltop vis Salt Lake City and our friends there and then hunker down for a relatively quiet August. Last year we had a late August wedding, but this year August is totally open for us to just simmer in the late summer sun. It seems like we will be gearing up for our September motorcyle trip to the Maritime Provinces in Canada, so before we know it, summer will be behind us and we will be putting away summer gear as Labor Day puts a wet blanket on yet another all too fast summer. I feel like I have just wished away my whole summer, so rather than think of this as a Memoriam to a summer yet to be, I will try to remind myself that there are 100 days ahead that are the most precious of the year.