Over the course of the long holiday weekend I have fairly devoured this novel by Catherine Newman, whose main character and plot resonate with me in 10,000 kinds of ways. The setting for her story is a favorite summer vacation rental on Cape Cod where the protagonist-narrator, a menopausal mom, has returned for a week (the standard annual stay) with her husband and now-grown children, one child’s romantic partner, and a pair of aged parents. It is a tradition they’ve continued every year since the children were babies.

The dialog between them is tender and maddening and delicious and racist and tolerant and prying and modern and outdated and erudite and snarky and clever and banal, the way multigenerational dialog in an educated family can be. You get the feeling you’re intimately acquainted with these people, somehow, have known them your entire life. And maybe you’ve experienced all the things that are part and parcel of summer vacation rentals: shitty plumbing; someone else’s leftover condiments in the fridge; kitchen drawers filled with worthless (but who knows, possibly useful) flotsam and jetsam; old, familiar furniture except for the new pull-out sofa (finally!); updated small appliances that make the elders miss and long for the beaten-up but predictable ones; nowhere to hang wet beach towels; mismatched tableware—you understand it all, instantly. Beyond the house, the billowy dunes, and then the vast Atlantic, the reason for going there to begin with.

This isn’t a book review, though. Instead, it’s a reflection the story inspired in me, and truthfully more of a lament about disruptions. While my own family certainly vacationed every summer when my brother and I were growing up, our experiences only rarely included anything akin to the same vacation rental house (it did a couple of times to be sure, in the Smokies). But the chances of ever returning to the same mountain house or chalet later on as young adults with our fiancée or spouse or even children in tow, or meeting my parents or his there for a multi-generational gathering, were needle-scratched right off my horizon by the time I hit puberty and mom and dad had separated.

As a grownup, though, during my first marriage, we did in fact make annual trips to the mountains of Western North Carolina, where for several years we rented a sprawling log home (plenty big for extended family gatherings) in Highlands, and later bought our own fixer on the other side of town—by then we had a second grader. When the transformation was complete, our place was a delightful little cottage in the treetops of Satulah Mountain with a jaw-dropping view and enough room for us, our kid, a kid-friend, and our animals, just like the made-up family in the story. It wasn’t a coastal vacation (we had plenty of those, too), but going there was a beloved tradition and it served as our family’s escape several times a year.

So maybe if I hadn’t enjoyed the family tradition of an annual destination vacation as a child, I could give it to my own kid. And I, we, my ex-husband and myself—we actually succeeded at this for a number of years, right through our son’s difficult and perilous middle school chapter.

There were moments of magic and delight, but also of unimaginable angst and frustration. An irksome partner who never let go of work, ever. Who never, not even once, consented to more than a long weekend for fear one of his consulting business’s clients would disintegrate in his absence, sack him and take their business elsewhere. When you’re desperately trying to make a happy childhood for a kid severely compromised by a neuro-behavioral disorder and you need a solid 24 hours with boots on the ground just so he can get his bearings, a long weekend sure doesn’t seem like enough time, because it isn’t. At the precise moment he had acclimated to the different four walls around him, the rough-hewn bunk beds and the little folk bears dancing around the room where walls met ceiling,  the shelves filled with Hardy Boys mysteries, and the less regimented schedule, it was time to pack up the car and head home. We couldn’t even finish a family vacation.

Still, we managed to experience some of those classic vacation moments that stitch themselves together as forever memories, mostly good as viewed through the lens of nostalgia. We spent many happy hours turning over rocks in the cold mountain stream that demarcated one edge of our bucolic property, for the joy of watching creatures skitter out from under them; took our dogs on long walks and runs along jaw-droppingly beautiful trails thick with mountain laurel in glorious pink bloom; ate well and drank too much good wine; on one night prepared the kind of simple cuisine in our own kitchen that makes you wish summer could last all year; fed our dogs vanilla ice cream on the sidewalk in front of Kilwin’s in town while passersby enjoyed the spectacle; became immersed in the local theatre scene and supported the little biological station and nature center; went on countless easy family hikes, rewarded with exquisite panoramas at every clearing; attended Eucharist at the Episcopal church on the odd Sunday; lingered in the indie book store (attended one Harry Potter release there at midnight!) and the local coffee shop; even got to know some of the business owners, who started to recognize us and say hey when we rolled back into town.

Then, right on cue, our marriage ended, just like my parents’ before me, and a short time later our vacation home was auctioned on the steps of the town hall to cover delinquent taxes, bringing to close a tragic chapter in our family life. Ironically, we had finished paying for the house. What a stupid waste of resources, even if we were to divide them.

I have long wondered how it feels to go off to college, step into adult shoes and married life, and then professional life, and enjoy the privilege of returning home—if not to one’s childhood home, then at least to an intact, finished family. I did all those things except the last. Each of my parents has long since remarried, but you know what I mean, the fantasy I’m entertaining here. It is unfathomable after the center stops holding. Likewise, my son will never experience it. He has two homes to return to and where he is welcomed and loved to pieces, but he’ll never again step inside that exquisite Tudor Revival home in the elegant historic Knoxville neighborhood where he grew up, the one we swore we’d never leave.

Is that for the best? Maybe it is, for him and for me. There are some truly dark memories connected to those years. Still, not really the finish I’d hoped for.

****

Postscript.

Yesterday started soggy as Tropical Storm Chantal’s outer bands began pushing ashore. We were out in it on our way to meet a potential new sibling for Scout-the-Goldapeake-Retriever over in a nearby county across the Cape Fear; Scout rested comfortably on his belly in the back while I rode shotgun and David drove.

Today has already had three of my favorite things in it, I said aloud to Chef David.

I counted out on my fingers as I ticked off the list: Sitting on the screen porch and reading my book with strong coffee, baking biscuits, and now, a drive out into the countryside.

How about, ‘waking up next to your husband?’ he countered.

Because I love to push his buttons, I said, Meh, and then watched for his reaction.

His pretty blue eyes widened and he just said, Wow, a grin forming at the corners of his mouth. I giggled and kept on watching him. He is wearing his hair longer these days and it curls up in a satisfying way at his neckline.

Then I quipped through my grin, I love you David. He said, Evidently only enough to make fourth or fifth on the list. More giggling.

Last night after we turned in and he’d had enough of watching sportsball muted on his phone, he plugged it in and flipped out the light. I had my book open and my little light clipped to its cover—it casts a small but intense beam.

Will this bother you? I asked, knowing he’d say no. Then there was some mindless hilarity, and when I rolled over to kiss him goodnight, I raspberried him instead. But I got my fruits mixed up and referred to it as a strawberry, which inspired more laughter. He corrected me, that was a zurbert. More hilarity as I mentioned I’d never heard that term, which was true.

I read a little while longer until the book fell out of my hands, and then moved it to the nightstand. David touched me just barely and considerately, knowing I was on the edge of spontaneous combustion. I realized in that moment that there really is no lamentation to describe my life right now, in spite of the warts, which there will always be. It is really all that matters, or at least all that matters and that I can control. Yes, we can and will finish this thing, someday, but only when death do us part. And that is the satisfying and reassuring thought I was thinking when I drifted off to sleep.