1983

I didn't have a solid plan for the future when I graduated from college in May of 1983. Since being in school was really the only thing I knew how to do, I applied to a few graduate programs, one of which was Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA. ODU had a rolling admissions policy at the time, and so I hadn't heard from them by the time I packed up all my stuff and drove south to my mom's place in Virginia Beach. It was probably just as well I didn't have any set plans; things were about to get complicated. 

After attending my graduation ceremony, my dad had flown down to Florida to visit his sister for a few days before returning to Saudi. While he was there, he experienced some severe abdominal pain. A doctor diagnosed him with Crohn's disease and recommended surgery to clean up the probable bowel abscesses that were likely causing the pain. My father called my mom and asked if he could come to Virginia Beach for treatment; my brother and sister and I would all be there for the summer, and he was worried about having major surgery with none of us nearby.

Before heading to my mom's, I had spent a couple of weeks visiting friends, and I rolled into town the day after my dad's surgery, which had not gone well. His appendix had burst in the OR, and after removing it, the surgeon had closed without any further procedures. At least that's what we knew. When the three of us went to visit him in the hospital that evening, he broke it to us that they had actually discovered stage 4 colon cancer. 

The initial treatment plan was six weeks of daily radiation, and so my dad rented a house four blocks from my mother's place, and my brother and I moved in with him. His radiation therapy was in Norfolk, 25 minutes away. My sister was still in high school, living with my mom, and my brother had a summer job in the kitchen of a motel down the beach, and so my role was to keep house and drive him there every morning in my yellow VW Rabbit. 

The shape of that summer was uncertainty, waiting around in limbo to see what would happen next, without much control over it. Dad spent the rest of his time in his pajamas on the living room couch smoking, reading the paper, and watching TV. The radiation was tiring, and he didn't feel like doing much else. I cooked and read and went to the beach. 

He wasn't cured by the end of the summer; although the radiation had been somewhat effective, the prognosis was vague, but not good. He would be screened every 4 months to check the progression of his disease, and they figured he might have a year. My dad was determined to return to work, though, and that's what he did. In the meantime, I heard from Old Dominion. I was accepted into their MA program in English literature, and so I packed up my stuff and moved down the street to live with my mom and my sister and continue my daily commute to Norfolk.

My dad defied the odds, continuing to work for another two years before surgery forced him to retire on disability, and then living another two years beyond that. I got my masters just in time for my sister and I to move back in with him for those last couple of years. 

But those were other summers and other stories. 

1982

By the summer of '82 my parents had split up, and my mom was living in Virginia Beach. My college's summer term requirement left me free of school from February to August of that year, and after a brief stay with my dad in Jeddah, where it became clear that there was literally nothing for me to do there except sit around his apartment, I came back to the States to sit around my mom's house. 

Well, that's what it seemed like until she informed me in no uncertain terms that I had to get a job. Living overseas since the age of 13 had precluded any kind of formal employment for me, and I was kind of at a loss about where to start. Turned out, it was the want ads, which my mother handed to me every day before she went to work. Residing in a resort town expanded the number, if not the type, of opportunities. After interviewing for a lot of waitressing jobs, I finally got one, despite my lack of experience.

The Lighthouse Restaurant was one of the pricier establishments that catered to tourists. Located all the way down the beach at the mouth of Rudee Inlet, the place had several ocean view dining rooms. After two 8-hour days of training, I joined the staff on Thursday lunch shift.

It was not a hip place to work, by any means. Waitresses were required to purchase brown polyester uniforms and white nursing shoes. In addition, we had to wear hair nets. We looked like diner employees, and if the owner ever saw us on the floor without a smile on our faces? We would get a warning from the manager.

Early on, it became clear that there was a system of favoritism in place, both for customers and staff. Any party not dressed appropriately, or with small children, or of color, would be seated on the patio, a glassed-in room overlooking the parking lot. Young couples and people who had clearly been drinking were often seated out on the deck, an open-air space cantilevered over the riprap of the canal. Preferred customers got the main dining room, and their status could be determined by how close they were to the floor-to-ceiling windows with that unobstructed view of the beach and the Atlantic.

As for the staff? Well, tips were always better in the main dining room, not that I would know personally. They caught me without a smile a few too many times to get that assignment. I usually got the patio, and I remember that it seemed like the kitchen was the fun place to work. Whenever I pushed through the right-hand swinging door to pick up my order, besides being met by a blast of heat and rock and roll, there was always hilarious banter among the white snap-shirted guys on the other side of the stainless steel counter as they cooked and plated the tickets.

The shape of that summer was learning what a full-time, below minimum wage job was like: pulling scratchy polyester on over salty skin in the heat of the late afternoon after a day at the beach, driving down the strip in my bright yellow 75 VW Rabbit, punching my time card and carrying trays of over-priced seafood through a kitschy, nautical-themed restaurant, and then meeting friends who were down from the city after work on the weekends. 

I sure was glad to go back to college that fall.

1980

My Aunt Harriett married a guy whose parents had emigrated from Portugal to New Bedford Massachusetts after WWII. Unfortunately, Larry has a fear of flying, and so when my mom rented a vacation home in Cascais, Portugal in the summer of 1980, it was only Aunt Harriett who flew over to meet us there and explore his family's country. 

We started our trip in Lisbon, spending the first night in a hotel before picking up our white minivan and meeting Maria Joao, the realtor who guided us around the coast and up into the hills of Malviera de Serra to the sprawling villa we would call home for the next 2 weeks. The place came with a maid, a gardener, a pool, and a dog. It was the home of a Voice of America reporter and the furnishings and landscaping seemed out of the 1930s, a place where Hemingway might have felt at home. 

We made ourselves at home there, too, shopping at the local farmers market and cooking breakfast and dinner. During the day we explored the castle at Sintra, the riviera town of Estoril, the working fishing harbor of Cascais, Cabo de Roca, the westernmost point in Europe, and other Portuguese towns, Fatima, Teixeira, and Porto, among them. Feeling so at home in another place seemed like a magic trick of some kind, like living a different life for a while, the one where at the end of an amazing day you gaze out over the Atlantic while relaxing by your pool and snack on strawberries picked that morning as your dog snores peacefully at your feet. 

The shape of that summer would shape many of my summers after that-- I love nothing more than barreling around a beautiful place from a rented house in a mini-van and imagining what a grand life it would be.

1975

In June of 1975 my dad left our home in New Jersey for his new job in Saudi Arabia. The plan was for him to get settled in and then the rest of the family would move overseas to join him in October. It was the summer between 7th and 8th grade for me, and moving seemed too far away to worry about. My mom, on the other hand, had a lot to worry about. She had to pack everything we wanted to ship over, (with a 3000 pound limit), get rid of the rest, sell the house, and the car, and pack up the three of us kids, our dog, two cats, and the stuff we would need until our shipment arrived three months later, all of which had to be transported to the airport and checked first on a flight to London and then on to Dhahran.

Wow. Until I wrote that paragraph, I never fully considered the magnitude of what my mother pulled off. 

Here's what I remember about that summer. Despite being ridiculously busy, my mom must have also been feeling a little flush, because my dad's new job paid a lot more than the old one. For example, after our usual summer trip to visit family in suburban DC, she packed us into the station wagon and headed south instead of north. The four of us went to Williamsburg, stayed in a hotel, and visited Busch Gardens, Colonial Williamsburg, and Jamestown. It was a summer vacation the likes of which we'd never had before, including dinner at the King's Arms Inn in the historic section of Williamsburg. None of the three of us had ever been to such a nice restaurant. 

I also remember Mom being a little less frugal when shopping that summer. Of course we had to have enough clothes to last us an entire school year, but there also seemed to be a few more treats at the grocery store, too, and maybe a bit more cash in her wallet than we were used to seeing. There were a few bumps, of course, like the time when she decided we shouldn't bring our dog, and we cried and begged and offered our own money, and so she figured out a way to make it work. And despite everything she had to do, I remember my mom being generally upbeat and excited about the move, and so that's how I felt most of the time, too.

The shape of that summer was change and opportunity, and the promise of transformation from the provincial to the worldly, all under the safe guidance of my mother's steady hand.

The Shape of Summer

Today was yet another perfect summer day here in Buffalo. The weather has been spectacular since we arrived on Monday: low 80s, breezy, puffy white clouds in a deep blue sky, some rain at night, but not much humidity in the day. 

The weather may be ideal, but the trip has been a little tough. Heidi’s parents are growing older; they tire easily and are a bit testy at times. It’s hard to know how to be supportive, not so much in the short term, while we are here, but the rest of the time, when we are 400 miles away. It takes a toll on Heidi and clouds the otherwise beautiful days.

As we near the halfway point of summer, I am trying to live in the moment and love each day for what it has to offer, because like every season or time, this one is beginning to take shape in my consciousness. So far, in addition to this trip to Buffalo, there has been the wonderful trip to Maine with all its challenges, my birthday, the days at home between traveling, the garden, my thoughts on teaching and retirement.

As a benchmark, I find myself thinking back on so many summers past and considering the weather, the travel, the activities, and what feeling those elements have formed as a whole. 

Regular readers know how fond I am of lists and serials, and in the coming days? I will present to you ten memorable summers. 

Late to the Funeral

All my life I have considered Elvis Presley as some old guy who died young. I was only 15 when he died at the age of 42 in the summer of '77.  He was literally my father's age, born 2 days later, and his music? Old, even when I was a kid. Then there were all those capes and sequins and the sweat and the sneer; I just did not get it.

But today we went to Baz Luhrmann's biopic of the king, mostly because it was a movie that me and Heidi and her parents could all agree on. It was a long show, and I have mixed feelings about Tom Hanks as Colonel Parker, but I sure did not expect to find myself quite so emotional at the end. 

Maybe it was spending time and going to the movies with Heidi's older parents, or my own senior discount at the ticket booth, or the fact that the character of Tom Parker was much closer in age to me now than Elvis ever would be. I just know that right before the end credits, when they rolled the footage of the real Elvis in Vegas in one of the last performances of his life, the weird old caricature of the guy I remembered was replaced by a young man a quick smile, and I was really sad that his life was cut short.

Fun Police

I was playing a friendly game of tuggy with Heidi’s parents’ dog, Briggs. “Gimme that, you bad boy,” I scolded him playfully. From out of nowhere, Lucy dashed over and grabbed the toy from his mouth and then brought it over to me. She pranced proudly away, satisfied that the fun was over.