I was in this giant house where I kept going up in the attic but there was still another attic above it, so I went up there too. In each new attic I found a different stairway that went up to ANOTHER attic above the one I was on. As I walked up the creaky stairs I felt something wiggling my big toe. Wait… I was under a blanket. Where was I?

A grownup man’s voice that sounded familiar said, “Wake up sleepyheads. It’s four in the morning. Time to go”, and I suddenly remembered. We were going to drive to Cape Cod.

I’d never been there, but mom said it was really neat because it had beautiful beaches and it was on the Atlantic Ocean and we were going to stay in a cottage right by the beach. I remembered when I went with Molly and her mom and stepdad to stay in a cottage in Saugatuck on Lake Michigan and that was pretty neat, but mom said she thought this would be even better.

But I think I was even MORE excited about our trip in the car to get there. We had fixed the car all up so that the back part would be like one giant cozy bed for David and me, but a bed with windows all around it like the two times we took the trains to my grandparents house, except now the windows would be on three sides instead of just one on the train. And David was even more excited because he couldn’t remember going on the train like that because he was so little, and I had kept telling him about how neat it was, and he was getting mad because he couldn’t remember.

Yesterday, dad and I had figured out that we could put the back seat and the wayback seat down and slide the two big suitcases with all the clothes in the space just behind the front seat. Then we could take the really thin mattresses from the “rollaway” beds that we kept in the attic and lay them down next to each other in the back to make the whole part of the car behind the suitcases into one giant bed. Then we would have lots of blankets, some to sleep on and others to sleep under, along with a bunch of pillows. We really only needed two pillows, one for David and one for me, but it felt more fun if we had more. The cooler, with bags of ice that dad had frozen in the freezer to keep stuff cold, would be in the very back of the car on David’s side, because he was shorter and didn’t need as much room for his legs to lie down. Everything else we might need in the car would go in mom’s big canvas bag, which would be on the front seat between the two of them.

And dad said that I could have the big maps in the backseat and be the “navigator”, but I had to let David help too, which I said was okay. I was getting really good at reading maps and even making my own maps. But when I was reading a real map I could tell whoever was driving what road number to go on and about how far it was to each place where we got to a new town or had to change to a different road. It would be like I was in this cozy control room of my secret special submarine, where I would tell the pilot guy what direction to go to get to our destination, which dad said was NINE HUNDRED miles away. I couldn’t even imagine what nine hundred miles would be like, but we were going to drive on nine hundred miles of roads, all TODAY.

So following the “plan”, David and I took our blankets and pillow off our beds and took them right downstairs and out to the car. It was still really dark out and I couldn’t remember ever being outside this early in the morning before it got light. It was kind of strange but really exciting too. The hatch at the back of our station wagon was open, and David and I threw our blankets and pillows in the back on top of the mattresses which were already covered with other blankets with some other pillows around. Then we all went back inside to the kitchen to get all the other stuff packed.

Mom and dad had argued about what food to bring, since our cottage would have a small kitchen with a small refigerator. Mom said we should just bring some snacks for the car, buy breakfast, lunch and dinner at restaurants along the way, and then find a grocery store near our cottage to “stock up” on food for the week. Dad said we could save some money if we brought food we already had to put in the cottage kitchen and made sandwiches for breakfast, lunch and dinner on our long drive. They argued about which way was better, and whether it was more important to save money or just have fun.

Mom finally said, “Eric, if you want to bring half the kitchen, go ahead. You can bring whatever you can stuff in the cooler and my big canvas bag. And we can bring sandwiches for breakfast, but then we’re going to stop for a proper lunch and dinner, and we’ll get there whenever we get there! I’ll make two thermoses full of coffee.”

I said that I thought that bringing sandwiches too for lunch and dinner was a good idea. But mom said that was “too much”, because if we were going to drive all day and night, maybe fifteen hours or more, we needed to have a couple longer breaks. She looked at me and said, “You don’t have to do half the driving, young man!” And as usual, even though it was two against one, she still won, and that was our plan.

In the cooler, with bags of ice that dad had frozen in the freezer to keep stuff cold, we put baloney, ham, american cheese, muenster cheese, a carton of eggs, a cucumber, a tomato and a big can of tomato juice, a half gallon of milk and some Seven-ups. Mom’s big canvas bag would have everything else we might need in the car. All the other food that didn’t need to stay cold, like the loaf of bread, peanut butter, mustard, apples, fig bars, Cheerios, potato chips, pretzels, plus the four peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I had made for our breakfast. But also all the other stuff like paper towels, paper cups, kleenex, lotion, bottle opener and plastic knives to spread the peanut butter and the mustard. But the big canvas bag wasn’t big ENOUGH, so dad and I decided the bread and the apples could just fit inside the cooler instead, just barely, and would be okay if they were cold. And the roll of paper towels could go wherever there was an extra space in the car.

Finally we were all in the car along with all the stuff we were bringing. David and I were SO excited. We cuddled up next to each other under our blankets with our heads on our pillows by the suitcases between us and the front seats. The “plan” was for us to go back to sleep but there was no way either of us could.

“Have we got everything?” dad asked.

“I sure hope so, Eric”, mom said, “We’ve got our clothes and bathing suits. Sandwiches, groceries and drinks. I’ve got my cosmetics, baby oil, books to read and notepad. We’ve got toothpaste,our toothbrushes and shampoo. You’ve got your books. I’ve got the paperwork for the rental with the phone number to call if there’s a problem. What am I missing?”

“Sounds like everything”, he said, starting the car. He backed out of the driveway and we drove around the park and down Baldwin to Stadium.

When he was about to turn on Stadium mom said, “Oh hell! I forgot my sketchbook and art pencils!”

“Do you really need them, Liz?” dad asked, “I’m sure we’ve got a pencil somewhere and you can use your notepad.”

Mom sighed and said, “Yeah. I’m so looking forward to sketching at the beach and I need my sketch pad and my special pencils. I suppose we could buy all new ones at an art store in P-Town.”

“Nah”, said dad, shaking his head, “Waste of money better spent on something else. It’ll just take a minute to go back and get them.”

“Thanks, Eric”, she said, “Sorry!” Then to David and me in the back, “Sorry, kids, your mom’s a little distracted. I’ve really got a lot on my mind!” Since I was an older kid now I figured I could say something funny, like maybe Ricky would say.

“Well okay this time”, I said, trying to use a grownup sounding voice, “But don’t let it happen again!”

“Yes sir”, she said, laughing.

***

I’d looked at the map the other day and knew all the different roads we were going to go on. We were on the I-94 freeway now. Then when we got to Detroit we would have to go on regular streets to get to the Ambassador Bridge to go over the Detroit River to get to Canada. When we took the train to go to my grandparents house we went UNDER the Detroit River in the tunnel.

I thought about what was more fun, a bridge or a tunnel. They were both pretty neat. On a bridge you were going over everything and could see it all below you, and if you were going over a big river, the bridge had to be giant which was kind of scary but also exciting. In a tunnel you were underneath everything and couldn’t see much of anything except the inside of the tunnel. But when you were going UNDERNEATH A RIVER, that was REALLY scary and exciting. I guess with the tunnel you had to use more of your imagination to make it exciting.

Mom and dad were talking quietly in the front seat. Mom was reading to dad some of the “pamphlets” about neat places in Cape Cod she had gotten from the “Triple A” place, where they helped you when you had to drive somewhere for a vacation and you didn’t know what roads to take. They had given her the big maps that David and I had in the back so I could be the “navigator” and David could help too. But they gave her this “TripTik” thing too, which was pretty neat, where they had one page for each part of all the roads you had to drive on to get where you were going. On the back of each page was interesting stuff about all the places you were driving by in case you wanted to stop and see them.

So with the “TripTik”, mom and dad could do their own navigating by themselves. Saying I was the “navigator” was more that thing grownups did where they gave kids “jobs” to keep them busy but they weren’t really REAL jobs. Still I liked being able to look at the big maps to see where we were now but also where we came from and where we were going. Cape Cod was SO FAR away that we needed TWO big maps to show all the roads we needed to go on. But I was happy for now to be under the covers in the back and pretend, like David, that I was asleep and listen to mom and dad talk to each other, which was mostly mom talking.

We got off the freeway and had to drive on the regular streets in Detroit to get to the bridge. I could see all the street lights go by as I looked up out the windows. Now we had to stop for traffic lights. After all that driving on the freeway it felt strange to have to stop, because you got used to the car always moving.

“Ope… there it is! The Ambassador Bridge”, mom said. I sat up and looked over the suitcases and the back of the front seat out the front window of the car. David did too. You could see the bridge with its top parts that went way up in the sky all lit up by white lights. At the very top there were red letters that said, “AMBASSADOR BRIDGE”. That was all really neat, and I figured maybe better than the tunnel. It looked extra neat because way off ahead of us just the edge of the sky was starting to be light.

At the other end of the bridge we had to stop at one of those “customs booths” where the guy with the uniform on wanted to know why we were in Canada, which was actually another country, though it didn’t seem any different. Dad rolled down the window and told the guy the answer before he could even ask, we were just “driving through to Buffalo”. The guy looked at dad and mom, then looked harder to see David and me in the back, smiled and nodded his head. The gate in front of us opened and we drove away on regular streets until we got back on a different freeway that started there. Its number was “401” and the sign said it was the “Queen Elizabeth Way” or “QEW”.

Mom turned her head to see David and me in the back and asked, “Is this the right way to go, navigator?” I nodded my head, even though I knew we were just pretending and she knew that it WAS the right way.

“Well”, said mom, “Your dad and I drove this stretch across Ontario on 401 once before you two were born. I recall it was two hours on one of the most boring highways we’ve ever driven on, like you’re driving past the same farm over and over again. But this shortcut across Canada is the only way we can make it to the Cape in one day’s drive.” She looked at her TripTik and then asked dad, “So do you think we can make it to London before we need to fill the tank?”

Dad nodded, “That’s what I figure”, he said, “That’ll probably be a good time to have breakfast. If I had it to do over again I’d have gotten a dozen donuts.” Dad was always thinking about donuts.

“We could try to find a donut shop just off the freeway in London”, mom said. Dad shook his head quickly.

“No time”, he said, “That’ll throw us off our schedule.”

“We’re on vacation, Eric!” mom said, sounding just a little bit mad, “I’ve always felt we should’ve planned TWO days to get there, like we planned for coming home.”

“One less day enjoying the ocean, Liz”, he said, not sounding mad at all.

“Yes, but one GRUELING travel day to get there”, she said, still a little mad, “Instead of maybe two easier travel days, maybe spending the night in Niagara Falls and giving the kids the chance to see them.”

“Can we see Niagara Falls?” asked David. Mom leaned her head back, looked at him, squeezed her eyes and mouth together and shook her head.

“Not this trip, sweetie”, she said, “Maybe next time.” Dad didn’t say anything but now HE looked a little mad.

***

When we got to London it was the regular morning with the sun up behind the clouds. We went off the freeway and went to this big gas station place that had a store with a bathroom and lots of trucks. We got gas, went to the bathroom, and ate our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, mom and dad drank their coffee from the thermos, and David and I drank our milk from the milk carton in the cooler. Dad said he was okay to keep driving, but mom said she should take her turn. “Eric”, she said, “You’d drive the whole way there if I didn’t insist and then you’d be a wreck after. Let me do my part.” I could tell dad didn’t like that she said that, but I wasn’t sure if it was because she was wrong or because she was right. He didn’t say anything.

Mom just had to drive for another 12 miles on 401 until we got to this place called “Ingersol” where we got off the big four-lane highway and got on to this regular two-lane highway 19, which had traffic lights and you drove right through actual little towns. But that was only 10 miles until we went through a bigger little town called “Tillsonburg”. It was strange because to stay on highway 19 we had to turn left at this traffic light but we went straight through instead and got lost until mom saw somebody walking across the street and rolled down the window and asked them, while dad was saying we could figure it out for ourselves.

We finally got on highway 3, which my map and the Triptik said should take us all the way to Buffalo. We drove through a bunch of little towns every few miles, and in some of them we had to turn right or left in the middle of the town to stay on that highway. After missing that one turn, we were more careful now when we knew we were in a town where the highway turned to watch for any signs for highway 3 with an arrow to the left or right. I liked driving through the small towns. It was fun seeing all the stores and the grownups and even some kids walking around. It really didn’t look like another country, though I had never been to any OTHER other country, like France or Germany, that dad had been to during the war.

We were about 15 miles from Buffalo when we got to this town called “Port Colborne”. We went across this one regular bridge with no top part over this small river. But then a little farther up the street there was what looked like another bridge except the road part was straight up in the air, and there was a big ship going slowly behind it. It just didn’t make sense to me.

“Oh wow”, said dad, “That must be a drawbridge over the Welland canal!”

“What’s a drawbridge?” asked David, before I could even ask.

“It’s a special kind of bridge where the middle goes up in the air whenever a ship wants to go through it”, mom said, “I think canals have a lot of them.”

I’d read about the Erie Canal when I did my New York State report, that let you go on a boat up the Hudson and Mohawk rivers then across the rest of the state to Buffalo and Lake Erie before they had regular highways or even cars. Mom said that this canal was like a straight concrete river that people made from Lake Ontario to get to Lake Erie around Niagara Falls. It was just wide enough for bigger ships to go through. She said that we were really lucky to get here and see it “in action”.

We had to stop on one side of the bridge while we watched the ship go slowly through. The ship had a white building in the middle with that top “bridge” part where the guys in charge of the ship could look out. The side was painted with a thin white stripe across the top, then a thick black stripe below that and thin green and red stripes below the black one. In big white capital letters on the black stripe it said “HELLENIC LINES” and at the bow on the white part in smaller capital letters it said “ELIZABETH BERGER”. Up at the top of the big pole in the middle of the ship was a flag that dad said was German, though it didn’t look like any of the German flags I’d seen in the pictures from World War Two. There were guys on the deck that actually waved to all of us in the stopped cars, and mom and dad waved back, but the guys didn’t look like sailors with uniforms, just like regular guys.

“Looks like a cargo ship”, said dad.

“I’m so excited”, mom said, turning to look at us behind her, “That you guys got to see the canal and a drawbridge over the canal in action. Pretty impressive don’t you think?” David and I both nodded really fast because I think we both thought it was REALLY NEAT.

Then soon after that we continued across that bridge and got to the “Peace Bridge” across the Niagara River into Buffalo, which was back in our country. The bridge was pretty big, like the Ambassador Bridge, but more the regular kind with all the stuff to hold up the bridge BELOW it and not ABOVE it like the Ambassador Bridge. But again, it didn’t look or seem any different going from one country to the other, except we had to go through that customs place again, with the guy in one of the little glass booths asking us a few questions. He just wanted to know how many of us there were in the car and if we were all American “citizens” and if we had bought anything in Canada that we were bringing into the country.

Once the gate opened so we could drive through, dad told David and me that a “citizen” was someone who was either born in the United States, or if born in another country, had taken and passed a special test to become a citizen.

I asked dad if the test was hard, and he shook his head slowly and said, “I hear that it is, and that a lot of Americans who were born here don’t know enough about our laws and how our government works, and probably couldn’t pass it.”

“Could you and mom pass the test?” David asked. He was in regular school now so he was starting to learn about what “tests” were and “passing” them was. Dad nodded his head.

“Your dad and I, I would hope so, yes”, mom said, slowly nodding her head too as she drove, “And you two will learn all that stuff in junior high civics class.” I thought of that Tappan school I was going to next year, up on that hill we would drive by on Stadium that looked like a factory without the smokestacks.

Now we went on this big highway called the “Thruway”, which was also called “I-90”. Mom and dad seemed to know a lot about it, I figured because they both used to live in New York. It was different because when you got on you went through this booth where there weren’t any people working but you pressed a button and a card came out which you took and then the gate opened and you could go on it. Mom said it was a “toll road” that you had to pay money to drive on, and you paid when you got off.

It also had these neat places called “Travel Plazas” where you could go off the Thruway to get gas, go to the bathroom and buy stuff to eat. Only people on the Thruway could go to them. We stopped at one and got stuff for lunch. I got a hot dog and David got one too. He always liked to get whatever I was getting. When we started driving again dad took over. Mom said we’d been driving for about six hours already.

We drove by this city called Syracuse where mom said she went to college at the “art school”, after she went to high school in Binghamton. It was also the place where you’d get off the Thruway if you wanted to drive down to Binghamton, where my grandparents lived. Mom said she was thinking about going to art school again at Eastern, where dad worked, now that he had gotten his PhD and had a good job as a college professor.

She said, “Your dad and I made that deal when we first got married and decided to start a family. First he’d get his doctorate and job as a college professor. Then I’d go back to school and get my Masters.” Dad pushed his lips together and nodded, but kept looking at the road ahead and looked a little worried.

We drove by this other city called Utica and then we started seeing this river by the side of the Thruway that mom said was the Mohawk River which was also part of that Erie Canal that I had read about doing my New York State report for my fifth grade class. We stopped for lunch at another Travel Plaza, got gas, and mom started driving again. After we drove by this other city called Albany, which I knew was the capital of New York, we were driving along a different river, the Hudson River, which I knew went all the way down to New York City. I really liked rivers and looking at all the places they went on maps.

Then we finally got to the part of the Thruway where this new part, called “I-87”, went down to New York City, and the other part, still “I-90”, went to Boston and the “Massachusetts Turnpike”. We went on that part and we finally got to another toll booth where mom gave the guy the card we got when we first got on the Thruway at Buffalo and paid him the money for our “toll”. Then we drove past a sign that said “Massachusetts Welcomes You”, which mom said was right on the border between New York and Massachusetts. Now Massachusetts was the third state I had ever been in. There was another toll booth to go on the Massachusetts Turnpike, and we got a new toll ticket.

We drove on the Turnpike for a while with mom and dad looking at the “odometer”, which kept track of how many miles we’d driven, and the “gas gauge”, which told us how much gas was still in the tank. They were trying to figure out if we had to get gas at the “Blanford” travel plaza before Springfield, or if we could make it 30 more miles to the “Ludlow” one after Springfield. Mom said we shouldn’t “chance it”, and she went to that “Blanford” one. We got gas and dad took over driving again. It was kind of neat watching the two of them be a driving “team”, even though they still argued about some of the travel stuff.

Before we got to Boston we got off the Turnpike and paid our toll. Mom told David and I that she was born in “Dedham”, which was just “outside of” Boston. Mom had told us that many times before, whenever someone talked about Boston. I guess she kept telling us because she liked where she grew up and wanted to make sure we remembered. I thought about that and figured that I liked growing up in Ann Arbor, though I never grew up anywhere else.

Now we were on a regular highway that just had two lanes and had stoplights sometimes when we went through towns. It was starting to get dark as we drove through “Plymouth”, where mom said my grandmother and my “great aunts”, who were my grandmother’s sisters, had a cottage that was a mile from the beach. She said they were all good swimmers, and her grandmother, who had a dog that liked to swim too, taught mom to swim by saying “Jane, do what the dog does”. Mom said it in a pretend voice that I guess was supposed to sound like her grandmother. Dad laughed through his nose and nodded.

“Grandma Glazer was quite a character”, dad said, “And she was smart as a whip.” Mom and dad seemed to really like people who were “as smart as a whip”, so I figured it was important that they both thought I was really smart too and didn’t do anything stupid.

“She had a thing for you, Eric”, mom said, almost like she was jealous. Dad wrinkled his nose, pushed his lips together and laughed through his nose, shaking his head just a little bit but didn’t say anything.

Dad said we’d been on the road now for almost fifteen hours. It was dinnertime and mom was trying to find a restaurant she remembered being on this road we were driving on, but she couldn’t remember its name. She even rolled down the window again and asked some people walking by while we were stopped at a light, but they didn’t know. So we ended up eating at a Howard Johnson’s. I was surprised that a restaurant that was in Ann Arbor was also way over here in Massachusetts. Dad said it was a “chain”, with restaurants all over the country. Mom suggested that David and I try eating something different, but I had a hamburger and David had another hotdog. Dad had french toast, though that was something you usually ate for breakfast. Mom had the fried clams, the thing she always got at the Howard Johnson’s in Ann Arbor, and said that these tasted better than they did back home because they probably were more fresh.

As we got back into the car, dad the driver still, mom said, “You look as tired as I feel. I still think we should have made this a two day trip.”

Dad wrinkled his nose and shook his head really fast and said, “No, I’m fine, Liz. I just want to get there.” Dad DID look as tired as mom did, but I guess men were supposed to be extra tough and strong and at least pretend to not get tired.

Mom said we were almost there. It was dark again now, just like when we started. All the different parts of my body felt achy from sitting cross-legged all day in the car.

We finally got to this really neat bridge, the Sagamore Bridge, which was all lit up. It had all these metal bars above the middle of the road part, instead of really tall towers at both ends with cables coming down like the Ambassador Bridge. Mom said it should just be another hour before we got there. Then we drove by this town called Hyannisport, that mom said was where President Kennedy’s family had their “compound”. David asked what a “compound” was, and I knew what it was, so I just told him, before mom and dad did, so they could tell I was really smart.

“It’s where famous people live”, I said, “Where they have more than just a regular house.” Mom and dad looked at each other and smiled, which made me feel good.

It was really dark and we were all really tired when we turned off the highway and down this road with lots of trees but no buildings and not many houses. Finally we stopped at this long house with three front doors, the one on the right end was our “cottage”. There were two other cars parked on the road and lights on and people inside the other two “cottages”.

“There it is”, dad said, “We made it.”

“I don’t know, Eric”, mom said, “Almost 900 miles. That was a hell of a long drive to undertake in one day.” Wow, I thought, we were 900 miles from home. I did quick multiplying in my mind, and if we did that 26 more times in the same direction, east, we would go all the way around the world, except we’d have to drive over the Atlantic Ocean and later the Pacific Ocean.

“But it saved us paying for a motel along the way, Liz”, he said, “Money we can spend while we’re here.” Mom nodded, but still didn’t look like she thought that was good.

We all got out of the car. My legs hurt from sitting down all day in the car with my legs crossed. The air was cool and there was just a little bit of wind, what mom would call a “nice breeze”. The air had a different kind of smell that I couldn’t remember ever smelling before, kind of sour but not in a bad way, tangy.

It was kind of neat how the people that rented us the cottage did it. There was this “lockbox” thing hanging on the door, and mom had the combination to open it in the letter that the people that rented us the cottage had sent to her. Inside the box were two keys that both opened that door. Mom opened the door and turned on the lights.

It was a room with a big bed, like mom and dad’s, in one corner to the left, with a dresser next to it and a couch across from it in the other corner. The other side of the room had a table and four wooden chairs. There were three doors on the right side of the room, one to a tiny bathroom with a shower but no tub, one to a closet, and the other to a small kitchen.

“The couch should open up into another double bed”, mom said.

“Where’s the TV?” David asked.

“Well”, said mom, “I don’t believe we have one. I didn’t think to ask about that when I made the reservation. We’ll just have to entertain each other in the evening.”

“I packed a couple of the Tom Swift books”, dad said, “Plus the monopoly game and a deck of cards.”

“There ya go”, said mom, making a big grin, “Evening entertainment.”

Mom and dad got the suitcases out of the car and David and I got the cooler and the mom’s cloth bag. Dad said to leave all the blankets and pillows in the car for now and we’d “deal with it” in the morning. David and I put all the food from the cooler in the little refrigerator so it wouldn’t spoil. David and I watched dad take the cushions off the couch and pull on this strap thing and pull our bed right out of the couch. It was all folded together but unfolded with a creaking noise and it looked like a regular bed. It even had sheets, a blanket and pillows already. It was pretty amazing.

I couldn’t remember when we’d all slept in the same room together, since that time when I was really little and David was just a baby and we all slept in that train “roomette” in the same bed. So we each took turns going into the bathroom with our pajamas and taking off our regular clothes and putting them on so no one else could see us naked. It was kind of weird, because all being in the same room like this made mom and dad seem more like kids, or at least people who used to be kids.

I had trouble falling asleep because the bed felt really different, and when David or I moved around, it made more creaking noises. Also I kept thinking about all the places we had been today and the neat stuff we’d seen, like all those bridges and those toll booths, and how I’d been in a different country and now a new state.

***

It was the next morning and we all slept in, even David. It was strange, because at home, usually I was the only one that slept in, specially in the summer when I didn’t have to go to school. So when I got up, everyone else in the family would already be busy with their own stuff. Mom or dad might be out running errands, or working out in the yard. David might be in the park or over at his friend Eddie, Al, or Gus’ house, since he played with all of them now.

So I would have the house to myself, which was kind of neat. I’d go down in the kitchen and make myself some cereal for breakfast, or even eggs, because I knew how to make scrambled eggs now. While I still had my broken collarbone, and wasn’t going to the park very much, I’d maybe set up one of my wargames or sit in the overstuffed rocking chair and read comics or a science-fiction book. Since I broke my collarbone in June, I had read “First Lensman” and other books in the “series”, like “Galactic Patrol” and “Grey Lensman”. Now I was reading “Second Stage Lensmen” and had also brought “Children of the Lens” to read here at Cape Cod, in case I finished the one I was reading.

But here at Cape Cod, at least this morning, when I got up everyone else in the family was around, talking to me and wondering what I was doing and watching me do it. If I wanted to read my book, David or dad would ask me what I was reading. If I made my own scrambled eggs for breakfast, mom would make a big deal about how I could do that all by myself. I mean I liked mom and dad thinking I was good at doing things by myself, but I LIKED IT because then they would let me do everything BY MYSELF when they weren’t watching me.

Mom said, “SO, I’m not hungry for breakfast yet, I’m walking over to the beach. That’s why we came here after all. It’s just a quarter mile up the road. Who wants to join me?” David looked at me wanting to see what I was going to say before HE decided what to say.

Mom did stuff like that, asked questions like that, like maybe you could make another choice but hers was the best one. Sure I could say no, and then she’d say something like, “You don’t want to swim in the ocean? Suit yourself!” I mean I WANTED to see the ocean and swim in it, that is as long as I didn’t get in over my head like that time in Lake Michigan at Saugatuck. But I’d rather decide to do that all by myself, with no one else suggesting what I should do!

But I nodded that I wanted to go, and when I did David did too. Dad said he would stay home for now and finish unpacking everything, and maybe take the car out and find a nearby grocery store. Mom, David and I took turns putting on our bathing suits in the bathroom. All three of us brought a towel and mom brought her big cloth bag with the big beach towel, two thermoses, one with hot coffee she had made this morning, and the other with Kool Aid she made this morning, some kleenex and paper towels, the book she was reading, and that bottle of baby oil that she always liked to rub on her skin whenever she sat in the sun. She suggested that we all put on our sneakers, because walking along the road with its stones might hurt our bare feet.

So mom, David and I walked the quarter mile down the road to the beach. Mom said when a road didn’t have a sidewalk, and you had to walk on the road itself, you should always walk on the left side, “facing traffic”, so you could see a car coming and get out of the way if you needed to. Again, I didn’t like mom telling me stuff like that these days, but it did make sense. We walked a little while until the road started curving to the right and then up ahead there it was. At the end of the road, below the big blue sky, peeking through between two little hills, just a little bit of a much darker blue than all that sky above it. It was the ocean, the Atlantic Ocean.

Before mom could say it I said it. “Look David, It’s the ocean!”

“Where?” he said.

“See at the end of the road”, I said, “That little dark blue part below the big lighter blue sky?” He looked and he nodded, but he looked worried. I remembered that he had never seen Lake Michigan like I had, so he probably didn’t know about a giant thing of water that you couldn’t even see across. And from looking at all the maps of the world, this Atlantic Ocean was more than hundreds of times bigger than even Lake Michigan. I couldn’t even imagine, but I wasn’t worried, I was really excited.

We finally got to the end of the road where some cars were parked and we could look out at the ocean all the way from the left over to the right. Actually, it didn’t look much different from Lake Michigan, which also was water as far as you could see from the left to the right, but I knew it was way bigger. There were people on the beach and in the water, mostly grownups but some kids too. That tangy smell I’d smelled before was stronger now, the wind was blowing on my face as I looked out.

“Is this the ocean?” David asked.

“Yep”, mom said, nodding slowly, “It sure is! The Atlantic Ocean. My swimming pool as a kid. My grandma’s dog taught me how to swim in it.”

Mom had told that learning to swim story many times, including yesterday, but I guess David really thought about it this time, being taught to swim by a dog. He looked at me like he was asking, “Is that really possible?” I moved my shoulders up and down like I didn’t know and then rolled my eyes around like mom was too much sometimes. Mom saw me do that, and as she looked at me and grinned and I saw her eyes twinkle.

“Have I told you guys that one before?” she asked, but she was just being silly, because she knew that she had many times. It was one of her favorite stories about being a kid, even though it was still hard for me to imagine mom and dad were really kids like me a long time ago.

“C’mon”, she said as she walked off the road onto the sand and found a place to put down the big canvas bag, take out the big beach towel and spread it out on the sand. Then she put the bag on the towel and said “c’mon” again and walked towards the water, and David and I followed her. We walked from the dry sand to the wet sand and a wave came towards us, bigger than the waves I remembered from Lake Michigan two years ago at Saugatuck. It crashed over, and then turned into whooshing foam that came up to us and covered our feet as it whooshed by, making the sand under our feet loose, so they sank a little bit into it. The water felt cold, but that’s the way I remembered it from Lake Michigan two years ago. Then all the water that had gone by us came back down like it was getting sucked back into the next wave.

We went farther towards the water and the next wave that crashed in front of us was bigger. It foamed and whooshed at us and came up almost to my knees and above David’s. He leaned down and put his hands in the water to feel it, so I did the same thing. Mom saw us.

“Now taste the water on your fingers”, she said, putting her own hand in the water and touching two fingers to her tongue. I touched my dripping fingers to my own tongue and it tasted salty. David did too after me.

“What do you taste?” mom asked. I could see David was tasting something, but he couldn’t figure out what it was.

“It’s salty”, I said, “Lake Michigan wasn’t salty.”

“That’s right”, she said, “The ocean is salty, lakes are not. In fact, that’s why Lake Michigan is a ‘lake’ and not a ‘sea’, even though it’s as big as some seas around the world.”

Mom walked further into the water. David and I followed, though I kept thinking about that time in Lake Michigan where I was walking and suddenly couldn’t touch the bottom and my head went under. But mom seemed okay and I didn’t want David to think that I, his big brother, was scared of the water, because David was definitely NOT scared of the water.

The third wave that came in was different, it didn’t crash, but just came up and whooshed down and by us, but the water came up above my waist and I felt the jolt of cold on my skin inside my bathing suit. It was up almost to David’s shoulders and he put his arms in the water and moved them around.

“You guys okay?” mom asked. I wasn’t sure but David nodded, so I figured I had to nod too. David loved going in the water and mom said he was a “fish”. I figured he’d never had any bad stuff happen like I had.

“Now the thing to remember here when you’re in the ocean”, she said “Is that the salty water makes you float better than when you’re in fresh water like Lake Michigan or Silver Lake. When we get a little deeper the wave will come in and lift you off the bottom for a moment. Don’t worry, just hold out your arms and wave them a little in the water and kick your feet back and forth a little and just feel how the water is lifting you up. And don’t worry, I’m right here in front of you if you need me.” I made sure to nod first before David could.

We were deeper now and the next wave came in and the top was at my shoulders and I moved my arms in it and I could feel it trying to lift me, though my feet were still just touching the bottom. But David got lifted more and I could tell by the way he was moving that he wasn’t touching the bottom anymore. Then that wave came back out and the water was back down to my waist and David’s chest.

“Now Mister D, stay where you are”, mom said, “And just get used to the wave lifting you off your feet. It’s fun.” He nodded.

“And Coop”, she said, “You’re taller, so you can come out to where I am, and even a little farther out, so you can feel the waves lift you off YOUR feet too.”

A bit worried, though trying not to show it because mom and David were there watching me, I moved out by mom and even went a little further. There was a wave out there coming toward us that was bigger and the top part was getting foamy like it was going to crash before it got to us.

“Okay”, mom said, “This is a big one, and It’s breaking before it gets to us, which means it will try to push us back to the shore. Both of you grab my hands and we’ll ride it together, and move your other arm and feet in the water to help keep you above it.” The big wave crashed and foamed in front of us and when all the foam whooshed by us I could feel it pushing me back towards the beach, though holding mom’s hand we only went back a little bit, and the water went back down where my feet were touching the bottom again.

So we stayed right there and kept riding up as the waves went by us and then the water pushed back by us in the other direction. After a while she showed us how we could do this thing called “body surfing”, where we could actually ride the wave back towards the beach if the wave started to “break” before it got to us. As it broke, you would start swimming towards the beach as hard as you could and the wave would pick you up and carry you towards it. David of course wanted to try it so I figured I had to try too, being his big brother. And after some first times for both of us getting water up our noses or our face pushed into the wet sand under the water we started to figure it out, or “get the hang of it”, as mom would say.

I think mom was a “fish” too, because after a while when David and I decided to stop swimming and started building stuff in the sand on the beach, she went way out and swam out where it was probably even over HER head. All you could see sometimes was her white plastic “bathing cap”. She swam like she knew what she was doing, tilting her head up to breath in air and bringing her arm up bent at the elbow just the exact same way every time before her open hand stuck into the water and her legs kicked behind.

David and I were each building our cities with big mounds of wet sand, brought up from where the ocean washed over it to a part of the sand just on the edge of where each wave got. Then I made a road between the two cities. I knew it was little kid kind of playing, but it was still fun. And I had just done the more big kid “body surfing”, so I figured I could play like a little kid for a while to be a good big brother playing with his little brother, if anybody was watching me.

Mom finally came in from swimming out there by body surfing a big wave. She stood up with her face, arms and legs, not covered by her black swimsuit, shining wet in the sun. She stretched her arms out, then up, pulled her cap off and shook her head and hair back and forth throwing drops of water to both sides, then she ran her hands through her wet hair and looked up at the sky. She shook her arms and legs and more drops of water jumped off her.

I remembered men friends of dad telling him when mom was not around that she was a “looker”, which meant that she was nice to look at, which meant that she was beautiful I guess. She also had that “nice figure” that grownup men liked, with long strong legs and arms and her chest parts and bottom under her suit I guess just the right size. But it felt weird to think of mom that way, as a “woman”, even a “sexy” woman. I had heard grownup men use that word about some woman to each other when there were no women around talking to them. And I’d heard grownup women say it a couple times about some man, though they were shy when they said it, but seemed to have more fun than men did when they did say it, like it was “naughty” for them to say but they were going to say it anyway. I’d even heard older boys say the “sexy” word, but I could never say it, even if I was just talking to my friends. I wondered if I could talk about that word with Molly, though I hadn’t seen her since my birthday party in April.

***

Mom, David and I walked home from the beach when we got hungry, and dad was there sitting at one of the picnic tables in the front yard, smoking his pipe and reading a book he had brought with him. When we got close enough that we could hear him, he looked up at us, took the pipe out of his mouth and smiled.

“The beachgoers return”, he said. He looked happier than he usually looked.

“Eric, why didn’t you join us?” mom asked, though she didn’t ask it like she was mad or anything.

“I was just enjoying some time on my own to smoke my pipe and enjoy the ocean air”, he said, still smiling.

Mom nodded her head slowly and said, “Well that’s good, you’re allowed, we’re on vacation, good for you. I think sometimes you and I, we’re both just working too hard. That’s what vacations like this are for, to do whatever the hell we want. I just wish it was for two weeks and not just for one. Oh and the beach and ocean are lovely by the way. Not much of a crowd, which surprised me.”

It was already lunchtime but mom, David and I hadn’t even eaten breakfast yet, but I guess it didn’t matter because we could eat whatever we wanted because we were on vacation.

After we ate we walked back to the beach, with dad this time. We all had on our swimsuits though mom said that David and I might want to wear t-shirts and even keep them on when we went in the water so we wouldn’t get too sunburned. All four of us went out in the water, and dad stayed with David and me while mom went out to swim by herself again. David and I showed dad how we’d learned to body surf. Then mom came back from her swimming to body surf with David and me, while dad went out to swim by himself. He could swim as far as mom could, but he didn’t look as good at it as she did.

When we got tired of swimming mom took us for a walk down the beach because she wanted to show us something. We walked in our bare feet in the sand and mom said it was better to walk on the wet sand than the dry sand, because the wet sand was “firmer” and gave your feet more “support”, which made it easier.

Soon we could see this tall white tower where all of the top part was glass windows. It was connected to what looked like a regular house. Mom stopped and pointed at the tower.

“That’s Highland Light guys”, she said, “It was the very first lighthouse on Cape Cod. George Washington, our first president, ordered it to be built, along with another one on Cape Ann, north of Boston. How about that?” She opened her eyes wide and made kind of a silly look.

“Is that for guarding the shore?” David asked.

“Not exactly”, mom said, “It’s there to help small boats and big ships at night figure out where they are so they don’t crash into the shore or some rocks by the shore. There’s a really big light inside those big glass windows up at the top that’s turned on at night that you can see from miles away. The man steering the boat sees the light and hopefully knows not to get too close to it and what side of it to go on to avoid the shore. We’ll bring you guys back out here after dark and you can see it in action.”

As we walked back to Coast Guard Beach, I realized how strange it was for mom, dad, David and I to spend a whole day doing stuff together. We usually only went out to a restaurant for dinner together, though we didn’t do that very much. It was like because it was “vacation”, they were acting like they were kids like David and me and wanting to do more stuff together. Usually we did most things ourselves, or with our own friends, but we didn’t have any of our own friends here in Cape Code, so mom and dad were pretending to be our friends.

We did go out that night, walking down to the beach then along the beach to where we could see the light. There was no one else on the beach and the ocean seemed completely different at night, scarier, all just darkness everywhere but still all the crashing and whooshing sounds that it made. At the top of the lighthouse tower, in those big windows you could see the very bright circular light turning slowly around, and when it pointed out into the ocean it lit up the edge of the water and sky, way way out there.

“It’s a mathematical problem”, dad said, “Right, Liz” Mom nodded slowly.

She said, “The people who build the lighthouse have to calculate how tall it has to be so that ships miles out at sea can see the light before they get anywhere close to the shore or where there are rocks under the water that the ships can crash into. Since the world is round and not flat, the curve of the earth could keep the pilot of the ship from seeing the light until it’s too late, unless the light is at the top of a tall enough tower.”

It was all pretty neat, amazing even, and I felt like I was in some kind of a science-fiction story.

***

It was our last night in Cape Cod and we spent the afternoon walking around Provincetown, which mom liked to call “P-town”, because she, and dad too, liked to give things nicknames. We looked at all the stores, got ice cream cones, and walked out to “Race Point” at the very end of the Cape, where there was another lighthouse.

We had gone to the beach every day since we got here, though a couple times we drove the car to this other beach, Longnook Beach, which was neat because it had sand dunes that were really high. You could climb up them and see everybody below and look off farther down the beach to the left and the right. You could kind of run down them with big jumping steps and your feet would slide down into the sand to stop you from falling too fast. The first time we went there there were even a couple kids with a couple of those plastic saucer things you used for sledding in the wintertime. Before the second time we went there, dad had gotten a big empty box from the grocery store that David and I used to slide down the dunes, which was really fun. Mom did a LOT of swimming, and dad did some too, but he also sat on the beach and read his book and smoked his pipe. David and I did body surfing and built sand castles.

It was interesting how the waves were different sometimes. Mom said that was the difference between “low tide” and “high tide”. At “low tide” the ocean would be farther back, and you had to walk out a long way to get to where you could ride the waves and body surf. At “high tide”, at least at Coast Guard Beach, the ocean would be much closer and the waves wouldn’t break as much and just kind of whoosh up on the beach, which made it harder to body surf. Low tide was usually more fun.

Now we had found a “nice” restaurant where we were going to have dinner at, instead of just eating regular food we had got at the grocery store. Whenever we went to a “nice” restaurant, mom and dad would always try to get David and me to get something different than a hamburger or a hotdog that we both usually did. I figured this time, if I wanted them to think I was more of a big kid, which I did, I should order something different. But if mom SUGGESTED that I get something different, and THEN I did, it would seem like she was in charge of me, which I really didn’t want. So when the waiter guy showed us what table we should sit at and gave us our menus, I figured I had to say something quickly before mom could. I opened the menu and looked at it and then put it down and looked at David.

“I’m sick of hamburgers and hotdogs”, I said, looking at him, “I’m going to get something else tonight.” He looked back at me like he couldn’t believe I said that, like I was some kind of traitor to the kids’ team or something, like it was usually safe for him to get a hamburger or hotdog, even though mom was suggesting he get something different, because I was getting one too.

“Really”, mom said, kind of like a question but also not, but like she wasn’t sure it was really true.

“Coop’s broadening his horizons”, dad said, making a big grin. David looked at mom, then dad, looked worried, and I could tell he was trying to figure out what to do.

“I don’t want them either”, he said, but now looking even more worried. He was only seven so he didn’t know as much about other things you could get at restaurants that could be good to eat and not “too tasty”, as he said sometimes when he tried new food. Mom made her eyes look pretend worried as she looked back and forth at David and me.

“Are you two up to something?” she asked. Dad laughed a little through his nose and mom looked at him with that same pretend worried look.

“Are you in on this, Eric?” she asked him. He made kind of a funny look too, pushed his lips together and shook his head.

“Well”, mom said, “I am pleasantly surprised that you BOTH are broadening your horizons. And since we’re here by the ocean, you might consider the fish because they say it’s fresh caught, not that mostly frozen stuff we get in Ann Arbor. Their board over there says they have cod, haddock and bluefish, plus MY favorite shellfish, lobster, scallops and clams.” After she said that, I could see David looked REALLY worried.

I had seen lobsters and clams, alive AND cooked, and there was no way I would eat that slippery gooey stuff inside their shells. And I’d seen mom and dad eat cooked scallops, and they looked like slimy marshmellows. BLUEfish just sounded too BLUE. Mom had bought cod and haddock at the grocery store, and they hadn’t looked too bad after she fried it in the frying pan. But the word “haddock” just made that one sound yucky, like I didn’t even want to say that word to the waiter. So maybe cod.

The menu had an “oven roasted chicken”, which sounded pretty regular. We had chicken at home a lot, but you had to eat around all the bones, not like a hamburger or a hotdog where you could eat the whole thing. Fish had bones too, the few times I had eaten it, which felt weird in your mouth and were really bad if you swallowed them.

The waiter guy came up with his pencil and little pad and told us all the “specials”, which were all those regular fish and shellfish that mom read off that “board” thing. He looked at dad, like he was supposed to tell him what we all wanted, not mom, who usually did most of the talking.

“I’m thinking scallops, Liz. You?” dad asked mom. She nodded.

“The kids haven’t decided yet”, dad said to the waiter guy.

The waiter looked at David and me and said, “We have a children’s menu with hamburgers, hotdogs and a quarter roast chicken.”

I didn’t like the way he called David and me “children” while he was looking at us, like we weren’t regular people like grownups. There was no way I was going to get any of those things he said that were for “children”.

“I’ll have cod”, I said, the one fish that didn’t seem yucky to me. But when I said that David looked worried again, and he ended up getting chicken. At least it wasn’t a hamburger or hotdog. Mom and dad both got those scallop things that looked like slimy marshmallows. It was interesting that when you “ordered” something at a restaurant, it was the meat or fish part that they needed to know, the other stuff, like potatoes or vegetables, you just got anyway.

While we ate, mom said she wanted to hear from each of us what our favorite things were about our vacation. She said hers was getting to swim in the ocean every day. She said swimming was one of her favorite things to do, but she almost never got to do it at home. There was a pool at the YMCA, but it was too hard for her to have to drive over there, swim, and drive back home.

Dad said one of his favorite things was swimming in the ocean too, but also to be able to just sit outside and read, smoke his pipe, and breathe the nice sea air.

“How about you guys?” mom asked David and me.

I didn’t like it when she always seemed to be in charge of what we should talk about. But I guess if she didn’t, we might all just sit here and eat and talk about NOTHING. Would I be willing to say what I wanted us to talk about, now that I was a big kid, and not a little kid anymore like David still was. What would I want to talk about anyway? The same thing as mom? Thinking about it some, maybe I would ask if each of us had to live on Cape Cod, where would we like to live. I think I’d like to live in that lighthouse we saw down the beach from where we were. Or maybe in one of these neat little houses in Provincetown that we walked by today that had one of those balconies upstairs where I could sit and watch everybody. I guess I really liked tall towers, or at least upstairs places with balconies where you could look down on everything.

“Thoughts?” she said, looking at us and opening her eyes really big. Now if one of my friends asked me that I wouldn’t think he was trying to be in charge of me and I’d just tell him. So maybe I could pretend mom was another kid because we were “on vacation”. That seemed okay.

“I liked the ocean too”, I said, “Specially the body surfing. You couldn’t do that in a regular pool or lake, or even Lake Michigan, because the waves there weren’t big enough. And I also liked the lighthouse, specially at night.” But then I thought of something else and said, “But I also liked driving here in the car. All the different roads we had to go on and the bridges we had to cross. It was an adventure. Also seeing them on the map but then seeing them for real too.”

I looked at David, and made a face like I was saying, “Okay your turn, smart guy!” He looked worried, but then his eyes twinkled, like he had an idea.

“I liked the ocean too… TOO!” he said, then he smiled as the rest of us laughed. It was like he had kind of told a joke. I couldn’t remember him ever doing that before, at least not with me or with mom and dad when I was around.

The four of us ate our food and all talked for a while, pretending we were all kids because we were on vacation. The cod actually tasted pretty good and David liked the chicken too. I figured I was really becoming a big kid if I could eat FISH.

***

The next morning we headed home, but we didn’t leave super early while it was still dark like when we came here. We did the same kind of stuff to the car, putting down the back seats, sticking the suitcases in the space behind the front seats, putting down the rollaway bed mattresses and then the blankets and pillows. Though dad had to do the suitcases, I did most of the rest of it, putting down the backseats, putting down the mattresses on top. I even let David do the blankets and pillows.

The first day going home we only went half way, and we stayed at a “motel” in Syracuse, which was kind of like the cottage, except there were a lot more than three of them, and it had two big beds and didn’t have a kitchen. Mom talked more about when she went to art school there, before she and dad came to Michigan. She said she “regretted” not finishing and getting her “art degree”, and again that she was thinking about going back to art school at Eastern where dad worked, now that both David and I were in regular school. Dad said he thought that was a good idea too, and they could do the “commute” together every morning.

All of that reminded me that mom and dad REALLY liked school. Mom hadn’t gone to school for a long time but she really wanted to go back. And when dad got his PhD and was done going to school as a student, he still went back as a “professor”, which was just a teacher for college students. I didn’t think school was that great because grownups, your teachers, were always in charge of you there all the time. I guess at least dad was now a teacher too, so at least he got to be in charge.

Maybe school was different when you got older. Some older kids like Marybeth and Danny said they liked it. But I didn’t think sixth grade would be that different from fifth grade. Maybe junior high at that Tappan place would be different. I’d heard older kids in the park who went there say you had seven different classes every day, with a different teacher for each class and different kids in each too.

The second day going home we went across the Peace Bridge to Canada and the Welland Canal bridge, though we didn’t get to see the bridge go way up in the air to let a ship go under. It was interesting going on the same roads for the second time. It all seemed to take longer when you kind of already knew where you were going, and what you were going to see, and the boring parts were even more boring. But at the end of the boring drive on the 401 across Ontario we played a game to see who could see the Ambassador bridge first. Mom won, which I guess I could have figured.

But the trip back was less boring because we listened to the radio. Mom or dad, whichever one wasn’t driving, had to do a lot of turning the radio dial to find good stations playing music, because they kept changing, and we had to listen to A LOT of commercials. A lot of times the station we had been listening to would have a bunch of commercials that we didn’t want to listen to, so mom or dad would turn the dial to try to find another station and we’d find one when it was in the middle of playing a song some of us liked.

A woman with a very clear voice suddenly was singing…

… ’em too before the night is over
Happy again

“That’s Downtown”, I said from the back, “Keep it there!”

The lights are much brighter there
You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares

“That’s Petula Clark, right?” dad asked and I nodded, “Can’t miss that voice!”

So go downtown
Where all the lights are bright, downtown
Waiting for you tonight, downtown
You’re gonna be alright now, downtown

Hearing her sing that song always made me feel better when I was feeling sad, like when I broke my collarbone and couldn’t play baseball anymore this summer, but now I was feeling pretty good.

We’d listen to the rest of the song, and if we were lucky, another one we liked would come on, but usually it would be another song we didn’t know or like or another commercial, so mom or dad would turn the dial again…

…get over losing you
And so if I seem broken and blue
Walk on by, walk on by

“I don’t know who sings that one”, dad said, “But I like it. She’s got that crisp diction like Petula Clark.”

“Dione Warwick”, I said from the backseat. I only knew that because that was one of Frankie and Stuart’s favorite songs and they used to sing the “walk on by” part whenever some other kid didn’t like something they did. Dad seemed to like the sadder songs.

Then we found this one…

…’Cause I know you’re no good for me (You’re no good for me)
But you’ve become a part of me

Mom had started to change the station but I yelled out, “Wait! Turn it back! That’s Martha Reeves and the Vandellas!”

Everywhere I go, your face I see
Every step I take, you take with me, yeah
Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide

I don’t know why, but every time I heard that song, and specially those words, it made goosebumps on my arms. Like you couldn’t be scared anymore, you had to be brave.

And David finally got to join in when some station played a Beatles song…

…these days are gone (these days are gone)
I’m not so self assured (and now I find)

“HELP!” he yelled.

“What’s wrong sweetie?” mom asked.

“It’s the ‘Help’ song!” he said.

And finally mom found one she really liked…

…find it happens all the time
Love will never do what you want it to
Why can’t this crazy love be mine?

“All right guys”, mom said, “This is one of my favorites. Tom Jones.”

“Do we have to?” David asked. Most of us kids thought Tom Jones was “too much”, like a grownup pretending he was a kid. I guess David had even heard that.

“Yes we do”, Mom said, “I listened to the ones you guys like.”

It’s not unusual to be mad with anyone
It’s not unusual to be sad with anyone
But if I ever find that you’ve changed at any time
It’s not unusual to find that I’m in love with you

And then there was that “A Taste of Honey” song with no words. We got to hear the whole thing because it came on the same station after something else we’d listened too. That was the one song that mom, dad and I all really liked, though David didn’t know it very well. Mom said it was great to dance to and dad liked to hum along without any words.

As dad drove us down the 401 across Ontario and farm after farm, he hummed while we listened to the trumpets play. I knew those were trumpets because I’d seen those guys play the song on TV. The song made me feel like something new and different and good was coming, and that anything was possible.

***

When we got to Ann Arbor and we drove around Burns Park back to our house, I saw the school there at the other end of the park and remembered that in a couple days I’d have to go back. Mom liked the idea of HER going back to school, but not me! I’d have to start getting up in the morning earlier than I wanted to and I’d have to start doing homework again. And my teacher would be in charge of me every day, except for the weekends. And even after school was done for the day, she still would be KIND OF in charge of me if I had to do homework. It felt like my life was ALWAYS going to be like this, at least for a very long time, because mom and dad both loved school, and they’d probably keep thinking I should love it too. And I still wanted them to think that I was a really good kid, so I didn’t want to tell them that I really DIDN’T like school.

At least mom and dad seemed a little bit happier, and weren’t getting in arguments all the time. Dad liked his teaching job and mom liked painting and having furniture in the living room so she could have parties. And maybe she’d go back to “art school” and she’d like that too.