I believe that the best moms are the ones that want to have fun with their children, especially in those fleeting years when the kids are young, and the summers seem long. My mother really knew how to rock the summers when we grew up, and I never really appreciated this until I became a parent and recognized how cool this really was.
I don’t think my mom ever had much say in what cars we purchased, and honestly I don’t believe she cared much about the style, as long as they were relatively safe and would not break down every time she drove one. The family vehicle of choice during my youth was the station wagon, and we owned several during these years, always used vehicles with something leaking onto the driveway. Every wagon was bright fire engine red, apparently so all could see us coming, and we formed a bond with each of these cars because of the countless summer adventures we took in them. My mom was a teacher, so as soon as the school year would end, the back of the station wagon would begin to fill up with beach chairs, sand buckets, Frisbees, kites, and other items whose sole purpose was recreation and fun.
One of the best parts about spending time with my mom was that we never knew what we would be doing from day to day. I see now that if she had told us about any possible plans, we (or I more specifically) would have been completely disappointed and would have complained incessantly if some tragedy like rain had completely ruined the plan (and my life) for that day. My mother was smarter than that. She took a more spontaneous approach and would suddenly announce:
“O.K. we’re going to _____________ today.” Much to our surprise and elation.
It never really mattered where we were going “as long as it was not to shop for clothes in some horrible department store,” my sister and I were always up for it. My mom grew up in Brooklyn, and loved the ocean. She would often take us to some beach, or park, or outdoor playground she had found that was near water of some sort, and we would spend the day running around exploring the place and then collapsing on the blankets we had spread out on the ground that had been claimed as ours for the day. When I first saw the ocean and realized how large and wonderful the places my mom grew up on were, I wondered how she could possible enjoy the tiny beaches and small lakes and ponds that she regularly took us to, but she never complained about it to us.
Another oddity about these trips was that they often involved other children – kids whose parents worked the year round, and who would have somehow wound up at our house when my mom made the decision to hit the road. The conversation would go like this:
We’re going to Lake George today!
But Ricky is here until his mom gets out of work, and Meg is downstairs with Mary (my sister).
That’s fine – they can come along. Just make sure you all put on sunscreen.
I am certain there were days when the kids in our station wagon outnumbered the seat belts, but after a few months those pesky (and non-mandatory) belts normally receded so far into the abyss of the back seat that we never saw or used them again anyway. If there were too many children to fit in the seats, we simply put the back seat down and all laid side by side, sardine style, amid the many supplies for that day’s trip. By July the car always smelled strongly of coconut sunscreen and one could not enter or exit without having a sandy mixture of lotion attached to your clothing and body. It only took a weird shaped sunburn on one’s face or a blistering burn on your back to learn that the sunscreen needed to be applied liberally. We used tubes and gobs and buckets of the stuff “never from an aerosol can, but always in tubes”. I do not think this was for any environmental concerns, because my mother had no problem spraying a cloud of aerosol on her hair, so I can only assume these tubes were cheaper. And cheaper was always better.
My mom knew how to save money, and wouldn’t dream of bringing this crew to the ever-growing fast food restaurants back then. We fed primarily from the cooler on those days, which was always stocked with homemade peanut butter and jelly sandwiches “always mildly squished,” apples, oranges, grapes, bananas “ becoming more freckled with brown spots each minute,” and sliced watermelon (never seedless, we apparently didn’t have those growing techniques at the time) in the obligatory Tupperware container. There was no soda or juice or Kool Aid in the cooler. We drank water. And water could be obtained from the nearest filthy water fountain, or garden hose, or nearby lake, river, or stream. The healthy treats contained in the cooler were at first met with clear scorn and resistance by all of us, but we soon learned that if we wanted to eat, those were the choices. And if we did not eat the crushed sandwiches today, they would just show up again for tomorrow’s adventure. We also learned that whatever fruit was left in the cooler by trip’s end, abandoned and floating in the warm watermelon liquid that always managed to leak out of the Tupperware and coat the least desirable food and re-usable ice packages my mother was so proud of with a sticky pungent goo, would only show up in that night’s fruit salad at dinner if we refused to eat it during the day. Resistance to eating these perishable treasures was fruitless (I couldn’t resist) and our best hope was to get one of the tag along kids to eat the brown putrid banana. In all likelihood, he or she would also be at our dinner table that night and would be served the same liquefied banana either way, so my sister and I felt that these children should get the unfreshest of the items now – it was just the price of admission to spend a few hours with the Farrs. I estimate that there are hundreds of children who suffered this odd type of hazing ritual while enjoying their time with us, but I can only speak for myself when I recognize that my odd behavior of eating over ripened fruit simply out of the fear that it will soon become more over ripened comes from these outings long ago. And don’t even get me started about why I don’t like fruit salad…
We kids knew that there were far more desirable, unhealthy items on these trips, but they remained safely guarded in the gigantic canvas “teacher’s bag” that my mom would heft around for miles to our various destinations. This was long before the clever thought came to put wheels on everything used for transporting things “suitcases, backpacks, coolers, shoes, etc…” My mother is not a tall woman by any definition, and her overall build is best described as “slight,” but she could certainly carry twice her own body weight around in that bottomless bag. And carry it she did – always and everywhere on these summer trips. Our mob of kids were required to heft gear and have various items attached to themselves in some way from wherever we parked the car to the final destination, which was usually at least 2 miles away to avoid what my mom called the “ridiculous” charges that, for example, the state run beach parking lot asked.
“Two dollars to park my car? No thank, you, sir! We’ll find a side street to park on for free.”
And she always did find a free spot. The less experienced of our crew, not expecting this extended march, might show up for their first tour of duty wearing some type of ludicrous footwear like flip flops when we invited them to the beach, but they only made that mistake once after learning that reaching “the beach” required some effort, as I’m sure reaching “the beach” at Normandy, France did in WWII. Flip flops in those days were all the same – some thin bottomed contraption that resembled a piece of bread with a sharp edged thinner strap that slid between your big toe and second toe to hold the thing on. Something always broke – the flip or the flop, between our parking spot and the beach, and the wearer now had some type of cut or burn that looked painful and deep between their toes that would soon require a significant dose of Vaseline (more to come on this). These wounded beach warriors would most likely be walking back to the car at the end of the day barefoot and hobbled. And the worst part about all of this for us kids was that it meant one less pair of capable hands to carry all of the equipment. But only mom lugged that behemoth of a sack.
I’ll never know for sure what all she had in there, but I do know there was a library of sorts from which she would withdraw books and magazines at any given time. She also had the bulk of a nurse’s office in the bag, and could quickly respond to most crying, hurt children by the application of tissue, band aid, or her personal favorite remedy – Vaseline. I’m fairly sure that several deep cuts which really should have been sutured in a licensed medical facility were simply filled in with the sticky substance that immediately started to attract sand and dirt from everywhere. “There you go,” she would chirp proudly after smearing the Vaseline into the open gash, and then she would use the remaining remnants of the gooey petroleum on her finger to apply to your lips. You NEVER wanted to tell the woman your lips were chapped for this reason.
Somewhere inside the mammoth bag was the candy store. Here my mother could retrieve licorice, hard candies, caramel chews, and her own personal favorite, potato chips. But asking for any of these treats was foolish, especially if we had food left in the cooler. The best idea was to approach her when she was enjoying the family size bag of chips herself, and to strike up a conversation about your extreme gratitude for all of these wonderful places she would bring us. With any luck, this tactic would be met with an invitation to “Have a few chips, honey!” from my mom. At this point you had to move quickly, because as soon as your hand entered the chip bag you would be assaulted from all sides by every other child in your party that day who would all scream in unison “Can I have some? Can I have some?” The best you could hope for was to clamp a fist around the largest group of chips you possibly could and then to withdraw your hand, throwing yourself away from the hungry flock while at the same time stuffing your fist into your mouth. At this point, my mother would be wrenching the chips away from the mob, stuffing it back into her bottomless bag while saying, in her best teacher’s voice:
“Well my goodness! I had no idea you were all so hungry. Why don’t you go and see what is left in the cooler?” This statement always dispersed the crowd quickly and effectively – better than tear gas. For the rest of that day, no one would see the potato chips appear from the teacher’s bag, although a keen eye could observe her dipping a hand stealthily into the giant thing and retrieving what appeared to be thin crispy objects of some sort. The licorice and other candies were given out with more leniency, and often while traveling to or from an adventure in the car. This is another example of a time long-forgotten when concepts like the lodging of a hard candy in the throat of a child who was wrestling other children in the back of a moving vehicle were not matters that parents and care takers considered at length. It seemed that there were infrequent stories – rumors perhaps, about a kid, usually the friend of a distant cousin’s friend, who needed to have her throat punctured by a Bic pen after a butterscotch candy became lodged while she was riding in the “way back” of the family station wagon. The tale usually included details about how the poor girl now needed to leave the Bic pen in as a permanent tracheotomy and how she kept the candy on a bedroom shelf at home, in a Mason Jar, like some kind of macabre trophy. I have recently attempted to find these stories on Google and You Tube, but so far have been unsuccessful so I will choose to believe that they were fabricated by children and parents back then whom we commonly referred to as “the worry warts”. Some children who rode with us came from these anxious and overly-concerned families, and they would accept my mom’s offering, not wanting to be rude, but then stuff the candy in some nook or cranny of our car where it would then sit, gathering used suntan lotion, sand, and food remnants until being discovered and eaten by a future rider who would brag to us all of his or her good luck in finding such a treasure.
But we all found our own treasures on these ventures, and most worries seemed to disappear during those long summer days. And that was the best part it all. Because I understand now that worry appears to be a requirement of the job as a good mom. So does talking care of everybody else and putting their needs before your own. So does giving love unconditionally, even when you may not feel so loving about yourself or the sacrifices – the countless personal sacrifices – that are made on a daily basis because your job, your life, your existence, is now really defined by this sole role: the mother. I realize now more than I did back then how daunting and difficult this task must be. I see my own wife, a fantastic, wonderful mom to our kids, constantly coordinating, and scheduling, and planning the lives of everyone else before she hands everyone their lunch box and sends us all out the door. Amazing stuff – truly not for everyone. And on those long ago trips, even if the moments were brief and fleeting, it seemed like my mom was able to find herself again, maybe a younger version of the girl that loved the beach and the sunshine and reading a good book while enjoying some potato chips. It was great to get to spend time with that woman as well in those times, and to hear about her life as a child, or to see her seem completely at peace and content with her life and the world around her – even if it would only last until the next request for candy from the bag or the next Vaseline crisis.
It took some time to realize the amazing and wonderful fact that my mom wanted to do these things with us. That she truly enjoyed being in our company. She could have stayed home every day of the summer, sitting in the sun in our backyard near the above ground pool with her book or visiting with a friend or two. She was asked to teach summer school each year, and could have spent her time in the classroom. It would have brought in some extra money for the household, and may have even improved the quality of her fruit salad. But she wanted to be with us, her kids “even the ones she didn’t give birth to”. She loved us that much, and thought we were great people, and wanted to rock the summer with us – and that was the coolest thing of all. So I write this in thanks and tribute to her, and to all you moms who rock the summer. You are truly unsung heroes, the heart and soul of loving families and great memories. Rock on, moms!
O am guilty of all the above. Those were the highlight of my summer. You were all such great kids. Now you and your sister have become incredible parents and people. It continues to be an honor to be your mom. What about the school clothes shopping trip? I know I will have to be accountable for that. I love you bunches.
I love this. Beautiful read as usual! And so awesome that you can look back with such gratitude and awareness of how your mom rocked lol. That’s the goal for every mom 😉
i laughed out loud….your mom sounds AWESOME!