What I Did on My Summer Vacation, Part II

You know how you can tell you’ve had a great vacation? When you’re paying the bills with a smile on your face because reading the credit card statement reminds you of what you did.

Here’s the gas we bought on the way to the tour of Camden Yards. Dinner at Famous Dave’s. The boat ride on the Potomac. Lunch at the Smithsonian. The liquor store to buy the beer for the cookout. Souvenir shop at the Football Hall of Fame.

My brother has his receipts; so do my parents. Nothing special. No safaris, or hang gliding onto a glacier. No one rappelled into the Grand Canyon, though I suspect my younger niece might be game if someone put it to her in the right way.

It was just three generations of a family, ranging in age from twelve to eighty, who, unlike the great majority of families, genuinely enjoy each others’ company.

We don’t get together as often as we’d like. The Ancestral Correspondents still live in the family estate in western Pennsylvania. The Sibling Correspondent and his family are in Colorado. That’s a lot of ground to cover for a casual visit. It’s not nearly so far as you might think, though; not when everyone involved knows that a phone call would bring any one of us to do whatever was needed. There are families living across the street from each other who can’t say that.

You can’t get any closer.

Damn, that was fun.