My Summer Vacation

Gino kayaking around Seal Cove

Dad and I cooking fish 1960's

Vacation this year was to Mt. Desert Island.  An almost perfect place, Acadia is a refreshing release from the sweltering sauna that is South Jersey in late August.  This trip is a family tradition.  I remember the long drive up, the thrill that I felt passing by the Manhattan skyscrapers.  And the Isle, giving me gifts from the sea, the rapture of reeling in a slippery, wriggling fish that was all mine for dinner that night, early morning tidal pooling and running up to Dad with each and every sea urchin and star fish I found, "Look Dad, I found a BIG one".  I remember one chill afternoon, we were standing on a cliff listening to the crashing, fog obscured sea below.  I was shivering, and my Father gave me his jacket.  I felt his warmth when he wrapped his battered suede around my shoulders, I felt his love, I felt that he could always take care of me, he was so strong.

The trip this year was bitter sweet.  Dad hung back in the car or camp, his body too frail to make most of those long hikes.  He tried and only got frustrated with his aching, failing shell. He is old. His battered marathoners knees are not dependable anymore.  His heart does strange things and he thinks he will never see Mt. Desert again.  The idea that he will not be standing there, holding out his jacket...

I love my father.  He is smart, kind and loving.  He can fix anything and has a solution to any problem I lay at his door.  He loves God and country.  Total strangers are drawn to him like moths to a flame and it is a family joke that he has a friend everywhere, because he does.  It is his love of traveling that has infected me, his love of nature and this island that draws me back, year after year.  

Dad at Seawall 2008