Hot Flash Friday=Go on Vacation

This is for me as well as (both) my blog readers. There’s a piece I’ve been collecting snatches of words and phrases and now need to knit together into a short—or whatever it calls out to become.

Your retreat place. Your vacation spot. That place of surrender. Where you can be your truest self. Most relaxed. 

Is it somewhere your parents took you every year as a child? We went to an old motor court called Wild Waves on the shores of Lake Erie—every summer there was a spectacular fish die-off as the lake was under a great deal of pollution stress in the 1970s. The old log cabins harbored spiders in the wood, the walls crawled with them. The cement dock was crumbling, every winter eroded another chunk of it. The metal Adirondack chairs were one color: rust red, with hints of a former palette shining through. Yet, in my mind, I travel there all the time, checking images on the Internet to remind me of that part of my past. A past that was past even back then.

Or did you visit your family’s fish camp or Granny’s house in the country? As kids you think this is all there is, and then there comes a time, the year after grandma’s funeral, when you stop going. The kids are getting older, far too busy in the summers, it’s impossible for everyone to get together—even for a week. Then there’s the repairs, the taxes, that make keeping the old place hard. What used to be becomes a mere memory.

What about that one rental, that time-share? We all have stories of nightmare destinations, of ants or lizards trekking up and down the walls, of hopeless plumbing, of descriptions that don’t match up to reality, of fighting to get deposits back, of making do. Or of paradise. The best spot ever—if only you could go back there again! 

Write right now. My neurons are fired up, quick—go!

Farm vacation, Jane and Nancy 1964, cow unknown?