Good ole' Days

Childhood has many wonderful things about it when we look back. I remember a place where the wild-child and the child of innocence met at a crossroads.

It was where mom and dad 'dumped' us kids for the summer and I was as glad as can be to be far away from the city of Cleveland. The location of 'paradise' is named after my mother, Tamara, hence the Tamara Bungalow Colony in Ellenville, New York purchased in the end of 1962. This became my summer home four years later when I arrived and thereafter until nearly 1996 when the final visit was made to the property. I enjoyed several childhood experiences here that centered around the earth, the water, the light, the dark, and especially in learning through trial & tribulation, the distinction between love and hate. Yes, hate.

For every summer vacation from the chaos of city-life, I was blessed. It was not a sending-away but a sending-to something better than what summers in the city might have offered. I loved the fields of wildflowers, the miles of green trees swaying in the light breeze and the dozens of inland lakes with cool clean water you just took a cup and ladled some deliciousness of ! This was the love part, the fragrant memory of scents that stimulated your sense of smell, sight and even taste.

But there was another side to summers in the country with the grandparents. When the whole family congealed on the weekends, love turned into disgust, particularly represented by the man of the family, mine, my father. It never sat right with him that his kids were 100's of miles away and he had to see them at least once a week. I would hear him thinking to himself, "Why couldn't they just be gone the whole summer and we could fetch them at the end of summer break, before school started again?" I never really understood his ill-regard for the driving, the long trip, setting aside time from 'doctoring', a specialty he was very good at and used to keep away from the family.

It placed a 'stumbling block' between me and my birth father for amny many years following the rituals of weekend family get-togethers. Although I cry sometimes remembering why he sent us away, but on the flip-side I am happy enough to know I was sent-to something better and more enlightening. Thank goddess for the ability my grandparents surpassed in teaching us about life through tears, smiles and the ocassional disenchantment that 'fathers love their children no matter what' . . .