2006

I thought long and hard before I committed to the five week summer institute that was run by our regional chapter of the National Writing Project. It would consume every day of the month of July, Monday through Thursday, 8:30-3, not to mention the at least half-hour commute. I have been spoiled by living less than 3 miles from my job for the last 30 years, and to me? Ten minutes is too long to get to work. But a close friend and mentor had encouraged me to apply for several years, and it turned out that this was the year.

I didn't know a single one of the 30 people I would spend most of my summer with that year, but by the end of the first day, I was all in. In the morning, there were 2 interactive presentations made by our peers, and in the afternoons we had either writing group, literature review, or another presentation made by an expert. Of course writing was the foundation of the program, and I never wrote as much as I did that summer. 

I had read many times how critical it is for a writing teacher to write, but after that summer, I was motivated to find three other teachers who wanted to be in a writing group, and we have met regularly ever since. And a couple years later, I connected with an online group of teacher-writers through the annual March Slice of Life Story Challenge, and as a result I started this blog and the daily writing practice it has become. And, yeah, I'm a way better writing teacher.

I recently listened to an episode of This American Life about summer camp. The whole premise of the show is that people who have never been to camp simply can not fathom what is so freaking amazing about the experience to former campers. 

But I know. 

It's the intensity: it's being immersed with a small group of people in a common, meaningful activity. That was the shape of that summer, and it is a dynamic that, to this day, I strive to create in my own 6th grade class.

2002

It was a little hard to believe I was turning 40, and Maine is an incredible place, so in 2002 I asked my family if they would spend a week on Mt. Desert Island in June to celebrate my 40th birthday. There were 10 of us: Bill and Emily, Riley and Treat (who were nearly 10 and 7 at the time), Courtney and Jordan (who were recently engaged), my mom, Heidi, Josh, and me. 

We rented a place that had recently been a bed and breakfast, with an awesome commercial kitchen, a big dining room, and lots of bedrooms. It was across the street from the ANP beach at Long Pond, and we got a canoe for the week so that we could explore the lake after returning home from our morning hikes.

Except for Heidi and me, no one else had ever been to the island, and we had never all been on vacation together. It may have been the first time, but it wouldn't be the last. The shape of that summer was an overture of interlaced motifs that we would all hear again.

2000

After eight years of teaching summer school, 2000 was the year I finally called it quits and gave myself my first proper summer break as a teacher. And that year, we made the most of it. 

We stayed with Josh and his mom in Cape Cod for a week. Our visit included a whale watching excursion from P-town, where after 2 years of fighting me for Heidi's attention, 4-year-old Josh finally reached up and took my hand willingly. I could hear both Heidi and his mom oohing and awwing behind us as we crossed the street hand in hand on our way back to the car, but I had known all along that it would only be a matter of time before we were fast friends.

A week or so later we drove down to Lynchburg to welcome Heidi's goddaughter Allyn, and then it was up to Maine to stay with Ruth and her boys. After a fabulous week of hiking and playing, we picked up lobsters packed to go and headed straight to Buffalo to spend some time with Heidi's family. 

And the big finale? Heidi had surprised me for my birthday with plane tickets and a hotel reservation in Paris, and so we jetted off for a week in France. 

The shape of that summer was freedom to reconnect and recharge, and as busy as it was? We went back to school relaxed and ready to start a new year.

1989, Part 3

There was so much we didn't know, but most of it really didn't bother us. For example, in case of a fire anywhere on the ship, the kitchen crew is supposed to be the first ones in. "Don't worry, we reassigned that duty," the Boatswain told us. "The hoses are about 50 pounds each."

And when we did the abandon ship drill, each of us was designated to a different lifeboat and directed to bring food. As a joke, I grabbed a number 10 can of sauerkraut and reported to my station. When they saw what I had, the other crew members were not amused. "Did you even bring a can opener?" asked one.

We also were not aware that the kitchen staff is responsible for cleaning the captain's quarters daily. To this day I'm still a little skeptical about that one, but my sister kindly channeled her former summer job as a motel maid and handled the duty.

I also had no idea how much Kool-Aid 35 men could and would drink every day, and halfway through the deployment it became clear that it wouldn't last. My solution was to cut back on the drink mix and add some extra sugar. Since nobody ever mentioned it, I can only assume it was fine.

Unquestionably, the biggest mistake I made was not to listen to the supply officer's advice. Preparing almost everything from scratch took all day, and we were in the galley cooking and serving and cleaning from 5:30 in the morning until 7:30 at night. We scheduled breaks for each other, but it was grueling. And the crew didn't really appreciate the difference in the food we made and the food they were used to. In fact, the opposite seemed more true: we heard a lot more complaints than compliments.

"When are you going to serve the captain's favorite meal?" someone asked early on. It was another custom I wasn't aware of, and to be honest, the thought of pandering to that crass curmudgeon did not seem appealing in the least. Even so, we heard almost every day how much he loved meat loaf along with pointed reminders of this mariner's tradition. 

The fact of the matter was that I hadn't planned to make meat loaf, so I didn't actually have the ingredients for it. But when we received word that our job had been completed ahead of schedule and we were going home early, I took a look at our leftover inventory and knew just what to do. The galley was oddly equipped. Because of the extreme danger of shipboard fires, there were no gas burners or other high heat appliances. There was a meat grinder, though. 

And so after breakfast on our last day at sea, I took all the leftovers in the cooler and ground them up into a mixture of vegetables, cold cuts, pasta, and bread, and I added them to the ground beef I had been planning to use for tacos, along with some eggs, tomato sauce, and ketchup. Then I poured the mixture into hotel pans and put them in the convection oven. Next we cooked all the potatoes and threw them in the Hobart mixer with our leftover butter and milk. Finally, we sautéed lots of onions and added beef base and a flour slurry to make gravy. 

Lunch that day was our final meal on board, and at 11:30 am we plopped those hotel pans full of mystery meatloaf and mashed potatoes onto the steam table and started serving. Oh. my. lord! I had never seen those merchant marines so excited. And oh how they ate. They returned for plate after plate piled high with meatloaf and potatoes and smothered in gravy. And when the galley was squared away and we walked on deck to see if land was in sight, we found the crew literally lying around holding their bellies and groaning contentedly.

As we completed our exit paperwork, the supply officer came by. "I heard everything went really well!" she said. In a couple of months, the ship was headed to San Diego, traveling to the Caribbean and through the Panama Canal, and she wondered if any of us had any interest in signing on. 

Our answer? Was a hard no. The shape of that summer was understanding that this was a one-of-a-kind adventure. We knew that we should enjoy the ride, because we would never be there again.

1989, Part 2

"Oh, no. We don't need any of that," I shook my head.

My first task as chief cook was to plan the menus and then meet with the supply officer and order all the food we would need for the time we were out to sea. After recording my requisitions for meat, fresh vegetables, bread, eggs, cheese, pasta, and other basic pantry staples, she had suggested adding some frozen meals, like lasagna or meatloaf. 

Both my upbringing and my culinary background were strictly cooking from scratch, and giant aluminum foil pans of anything were not part of that vision. The supply officer raised her eye brows and shrugged. I was the chief, after all. 

Our ship was designed for construction, not cruising, and so a Coast Guard cutter would tow us up the Atlantic seaboard to Newport. We were scheduled to get underway around midnight, and after a day of drills and other preparation, we officially reported for duty at 8 PM. We stowed our gear in our adjoining cabins, which were separated by a shared bathroom and shower, and went to bed, because breakfast was at 6 AM.

I don't remember my alarm buzzing, but I do recall rising in the dim light and making my way to the head. When I opened the door, I saw my sister across the way in her cabin, arms spread wide, and staggering back and forth past the door. It was then that I realized that we were actually at sea, and the boat was rocking rather emphatically from side to side. 

Standing still was a challenge, but somehow we dressed and reeled our way down to the galley. Coffee was brewing 24-7, and so we put some orange juice concentrate into the cold drink machine, set up the cereal bar, and began cooking bacon and sausage. Scrambled eggs were on the steam table, but we would cook eggs to order, too. 

Service went pretty well, although several guys wanted to know where the doughnuts were. When the captain came through the line, he did not seem impressed. "I'll have fried eggs," he said. "Make sure to get the snot out of them."

1989, Part 1

It was fun living at the beach, but in the 80s there were not many jobs beyond the military, tourism, and other service related industries. So one by one, my family moved north. First my mom left to pursue a government relations job when the Navy subcontract project she had been hired on to ended. Then after spending the summer he graduated from college at the beach, my brother also moved up to DC. in search of a career. 

After my dad died, my sister was still in college and I was working as a cook at a local cafe and catering company, and so we hung in there for a couple more years, but by the summer of 1989? It seemed like it was time for us to move up to Washington, too. In retrospect, I think I might have stayed but for the fact that my girlfriend at the time, as well as my friend Curtis, also wanted to move to DC. 

Our lease ran through the end of August, and a friend of my mom's had an interesting proposition. His company owned several merchant ships, including an "ocean-going construction platform" that was contracted for the first three weeks of August to do a job at the Newport Naval Station in Rhode Island and another just off the Jersey coast. This particular vessel needed a chief cook and a kitchen crew of two, and the jobs were ours if we wanted them. 

I can't remember what the pay was, but it was enough that my sister, my girlfriend, and I gleefully accepted.

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.