Memories of summer

We’re finally selling my dad’s old pop-up camper this afternoon.

As a very young child, I cannot remember ever camping with my parents. As my dad got older and started preparing for the retirement he would never see, he became a camping enthusiast. If you can equate “camping” with driving around the country with a huge 5th wheel camper that opened up like a transformer with every creature comfort imaginable.

The pop-up that’s sitting in our driveway was his “starter” camper. He took it all over Northern Illinois, as far south as Missouri and I drove it to Indiana and Minnesota on trips with my boys when they were infants and toddlers. The air-conditioning, heat, roomy beds and micro fridge made it pretty easy to camp with a baby.

Each time we took the pop-up to a campground somewhere, I would make up for all those years of not camping with the enthusiasm of a tween -practically shouldering everyone else out of the way so I could do all of the set up. It truly was a labor of love.

Maybe six months after dad passed away, we took the camper out for what would be our final trip in it -up North. We stored it on a farm afterward and it was infested with field mice who damaged the canvas walls and tinted plastic windows, peed and pooped all over the floor and chewed tiny holes in the front awning. Several hundred dollars would be enough to replace the holey bits, but we are so short on cash right now that it’s just easier to sell it off and use the money for this summer’s needs.

Still, opening it up and cleaning it out has been like an ammonia-soaked stroll down memory lane. Dad’s Kansas City Chiefs holiday light set was tucked into the back corner of a cabinet, all the extra unopened gadgets and doodads he’d purchased (spare reflectors, tap lights, water hoses, and liquid leveling tubes) were still tucked into drawers or buried in the rodents’ nesting material.

The cleaning was somewhat spiritual as well. Vacuuming and sweeping and spraying and scrubbing away the remains of all those nasty vermin seems to have taken a bit of the resentment and the hurt out of me from the years since I lost dad. After he passed away I quit school, barely camped once a year and generally gave up on enjoying my summers at all.

Today I realized that I’ve more than bounced back from his loss -I’m ready to start thriving again. Summers now are a chance for me to watch my sons run through the sprinkler, the bees buzzing around my herb garden and the dogs chasing squirrels on the powerline above our fence. Finishing school was like a millstone around my neck for so many years… now that I’ve done it I’m looking toward graduate school with new eyes. I’m ready to pull my head out of the sand and make an effort to really be happy.

I’m ready for summer.