Family: August 1, 2010
Posted on August 8, 2010[Continued from "Family: July 31, 2010."]
We once again woke up to my sister’s voice. And the sun. Coffee for the Viking, breakfast for both of us.
We were leaving that day and knew we had to break down our camp. We had already run out of fuel for the camp stove, so that was easy to put away. The tent was a bigger job, because it was a bigger tent.
We loaded the car and then began taking the tent down. Then I remembered why I don’t like camping. It’s dirty. It’s hot. (Neither of these in a sexy way whatsoever.) Well, it’s hot if you’re lucky. If you’re not lucky it’s cold and wet.
When I was a kid, when I lived with my father and step-mother, the family went on a lot of camping trips. At the time we had an old canvas tent for the kids, and a newfangled nylon tent for the parents. Our parents always got the better of anything we had. Better tent, better sleeping bags. When we set the table for dinner, which we did nightly, the parents got butter and we got margarine.
So there four of us kids would be in a canvas tent. Because there were four of us and the size and shape of the tent, at least two of us, even when lying down, were under the sagging walls of the sides of the tent, and could not help but touch the tent, even when lying down. Sometimes it rained on our camping trips. The canvas tent was waterproof so long as the canvas had not made contact with anything. If it was raining it would remain dry inside only until something touched the canvas. Once the canvas was touched, thereafter it leaked.
More times than I can count, I woke up wet. At the time us kids were given cheap air mattresses to sleep on. Given, the days of Aero products were far in the future, so we had few options. Nonetheless, it was a pain in the ass to pump up our air mattresses via foot pump. At some time during my childhood we graduated from the foot pump to a car battery-powered pump for the air mattresses. When we used that at night I always felt bad for our fellow campers because it was so damn loud.
More times than I can count, I woke up with my ass touching the ground. More times than I can count, I woke up with my wet ass touching the ground. I moved out of my parents’ house when I was 16; I’ve not camped since.
Until now. When I realized I hadn’t camped in about 20 years, it made me feel old. And grateful.
Breaking down the tent and packing it and its parts into the proper factory receptacles made me grateful I didn’t have to again set up the tent so it could be vacuumed. That was definitely what my step-mother would do once the tent was back at their place in Reno. It made me grateful I don’t have a tent of my own. It made me grateful I don’t camp.
The fact that the Viking was also over camping – he said he hadn’t done so in ten years – also made me grateful. We can not camp together whilst living in major cities.
We packed up the tent and vacated our site well before the noon deadline. Thereafter, we had little to do. I went around to all the family members saying goodbyes and thank yous. The Viking said thank yous and nice to meet yous. We talked to my sister and step-sister for a little bit, and then we were again bored.
We drove home. Actually, the Viking did all the driving home. I don’t like to drive, and he seemed to enjoy it from what I could tell when I was awake, which admittedly wasn’t for long. I get very sleepy when in a car. Add to that the fact that we were listening to David Sedaris’s When You Are Engulfed in Flames and I slept most of the way home. I often fall asleep listening to podcasts, which are people talking, just like an audio book.
Isis was very good the entire way home, and when we got home she crashed. She had a very stimulating weekend.
The Viking and I had a very boring weekend. But it was over. We were home. I had visited my mother. I had told my family that I was moving. I didn’t have to deal – really deal – with any of them for a while. I told them they could come visit us in Chicago, of course, but I’ll be very surprised if they ever take me up on the offer; my family is not particularly close.
Or maybe it’s just me. I would kill myself before I lived in the suburbs again. My step-brother and my parents live in Reno; my sister lives in Eureka; my step-sister lives in a ‘burb of Seattle. I need to live in a city, with a lot of people and activity around. Someone on the camping trip said I had “trained” myself to like cities. No, I just like cities.
None of us talk to each other much. But maybe they just don’t talk to me. When I moved out of my parents’ house when I was 16 I didn’t feel particularly close to my family. My father sat me down and said that if I was arrested before I turned 18, after which he would not be responsible for me, he would tell the police that I had run away, that he didn’t know where I was. That he assumed I’d be arrested (I never was.), and some other things, didn’t make me feel particularly warm and fuzzy toward him.
When I graduated from high school – after I had moved out of my parents’ home – my step-mother claimed to be embarrassed by me at my graduation because I had shaved my head. She was also a complete cunt at my law school graduation. I’m sure if I had attended and invited her to my college graduation she would have had some reason to have the focus on her. The negative focus. That, and some other things, didn’t make me feel particularly warm and fuzzy toward her.
My mother doesn’t know up from down now. I can’t hold much of a grudge against her since she can’t remember leaving me home alone when I was seven. Or traipsing her “lovers” in and out of my life for years, making me think that all relationships were transitory at best. That, and some other things, didn’t make me feel particularly warm and fuzzy toward her.
My siblings, I love, we just don’t seem to have that much to say to each other that often. We update each other on the major events, and that seems to be it. For sure, I have a lot to do with this; I’m guarded with them.
The Viking gets bit up by mosquitoes all the time when we’re home in San Francisco; he did not get bit at all when camping. Also, there was poison-oak all over the camping area. While the adults present knew enough not to touch it, Isis wasn’t so lucky. I figured she’d rub on it, I’d pet her, and inevitably I’d get the fun, itchy rash that goes along with poison-oak’s oils, to which I’m particularly prone. No such thing happened. Overall, a successful camping trip.
There’s no poison-oak in the Midwest.
I swear. True story.
Categories: True Story.
Hehe….sorry for waking you up, but you’re just as loud as I am btw! We must have gotten the loud mouth gene from our mother, sure the hell wasn’t from Dad!
09.08.2010 12:46
Yeah, it was definitely from Mom. I know I’m loud, but mornings are not my thing. That I got from Dad.
10.08.2010 00:32