Family Vacation -- ties that bind

When I was a kid, family vacation meant piling in the old station wagon early in the morning for a one-day road trip to the San Diego Zoo and the beach .  The 12 kids, or however many were available to go, would occupy every seat and empty spot in the old car,  leaving little room for some towels, an igloo jug of watery koolaid and a bag of peanut butter sandwiches, storebought butter cookies, cereal and powdered milk, and donuts, if we were lucky. Being the youngest and smallest,  I always had to sit in the front between my parents for the three-hour journey from our home in Yuma, Arizona to San Diego.   Sitting up front, I missed out on the fun of dropping things through the holes in the floorboards and watching them dance on the steamy asphalt from the back window.

About two/thirds of the way to San Diego, we'd stop in Pine Valley, CA for the bathroom and breakfast at the picnic tables, which involved the hostess donuts brought from home, or a rare treat of the little boxes of cereal that could be torn into a bowl.  We'd arrive at the zoo just as it opened to maximize our time there.  We never rode the tour bus through the zoo grounds -- that cost more money than my parents could afford.  We always walked our weary legs through every inch of the hundred-acre zoo.  I remember visiting the giant tortoise that supposedly gave kids a ride.  But every time this excited little girl sat on the tortoise, he refused to move until the next kid got on!  The squirrel monkeys were my favorite because they were so cute, and my least favorite animal was the orangutans.  I have a distinct memory of them throwing poop at us and I thought the way they ate bugs they'd pick off each other's back was gross. 

After we had seen all there was to see in the zoo (or as much as we could see in half a day), we'd stop at the gorilla busts in the entrance and take the traditional picture of us sitting on the bust.  This past year when I was at the zoo with Julia, I insisted on taking a picture with the gorilla.  I remember them being different, but everything looks different through an adult's eyes.

After the zoo we'd go to Mission, Pacific or Ocean Beach for the afternoon.  We'd have our lunch of sandy peanut butter sandwiches and the watery grape koolaid, swim in the ice-cold waves, make "drippy castles" in the mud at the waters' edge and hunt for teeny crabs that scurried near our feet before burrowing in the mud as the tide went out.  Late in the day after we were sufficiently sun-burnt and our bathing suit bottoms drooped from little loads of accumulated sand, we'd pack up, rinse off at the bath-house showers, and begin the journey home, usually having to stop along I-8 to fill the car radiator that always over-heated.

Family vacations with my kids are a little longer and a bit more elaborate than we had so many years ago.  But our family getaways of then and now have one thing in common -- San Diego.  My kids love going there each summer as much as my 11 siblings and I did when we were kids.  Jeff and I had taken the kids there for a few days when they were little, and the kids and I went back about 7 years ago to fulfill my long-time dream of renting a house on the Mission Beach Boardwalk.  Anytime I had been to San Diego even through adulthood, I always stared with envy at the people renting on the boardwalk and thought how fun that would be.  So one Spring after searching on line, I found the "ultimate beach house" right on the boardwalk near Belmont Park and started a new Schmitt family tradition.  Several of my sisters now rent just off the beach and we spend the week together, sometimes as many as 30 of us.  It's the one time of year the cousins, from the babies to the adults, get to spend time together and get to know each other.  We each host dinner one night and do s'mores on the beach.  We rarely leave Mission Beach to do anything touristy, so the entire week we spend with our butts parked on the beach, catching up on each others's lives, walking the beach looking for sand dollars and shells, or riding our rented beach cruisers on the boardwalk.

This year the last day I was there, I went for a swim with my sister Anne-Marie.  A bunch of the family was hanging out  by the water when the kids found a piece of kelp about 20 feet long.  We started using it as a jump rope and entertained ourselves, and others on the beach, for more than an hour.  

We sang old jump rope chants we used to sing in grade school and had more fun that we've had together in a very long time.  It's amazing how that washed-up sea plant brought us together, from the 4-year-old great niece to the 69-year-old sister who took pictures, and gave us a memory that will be with us for a long time.

Saying goodbye to everyone after the week together is always emotional for me.  It's the one vacation my kids and I take that ends with us wishing we had another week.  The time I spend with my siblings and their kids and my kids is something I look forward to all year long.  Because we all love it so much, we always suffer through the post-vacation blues when we get home.  This year the funk was rather strong for me -- once I got home I missed the sights, sounds and smells of the ocean right outside my door, and I missed my family.  There's something to be said for having siblings a shout away.  As small as the world is, the vacation week leaves me wishing it were even smaller so I could be closer to my family year-round.  

I guess next year I'll have to rent two weeks …