Memories of Mom: It Wasn't Very Funny at the Time

This is the second installment in the "good memories of Mom" project recommended by Judy, Judy, Judy to offset the unhappy memories that have been cycling through my memory lately. Mom's birthday is next Monday, which is probably why these thought-vultures have been circling. This series of good memories is the antidote. I've only just started, but it seems to be working.

From the time I was five until I was 12, my family and my aunt and uncle's family went car camping at a manmade lake in Northern California, on the border with Nevada, somewhat south of Lake Tahoe. We shared a boat and the vacation essentially consisted of parking our truck and camper and their camper-trailer in connecting campsites and spending our days on the other side of the lake, boating and water-skiing and generally goofing around. 

When I was younger, it was great fun, but as I grew older, it grew a bit tiresome on occasion. I was the only girl among a brother and a couple of cousins and, on our last 2 trips a half-brother as well. And I just did not relate to my mom or my aunt, but I usually was left in their company because ours was a very gender-stratified family. And the guys got to spend more time with the boat and do more fun things, to my way of thinking.

At the time of this story, I was 11 or 12. It was a windy day and we'd spent quite a bit of time and effort weighting down the ties for the tarp so the adults could sit in the shade. (They simply slathered us kids with sunscreen and hoped for the best.) My aunt had her small dog with her, a chihuahua-mix of some sort, and it was quite nervous about the flapping of the tarp when the wind gusted through.

A little after lunch, the guys took the boat out. The were going to ski around to other parts of the lake and generally goof off with the boat for awhile. But usually they were back within an hour or so. Not so this day.

This day, my mom, my aunt, and I (and the little dog) waited. And waited. And waited. The wind picked up and soon all the rocks in the world couldn't hold the tie-downs in the sand and the tarp went down, right on top of my mom and my aunt. They yelled for me to come help, the dog ran about 10 feet away and shivered while the three of us wrestled the tarp back up and the tie-downs back down. Then my aunt and my mom sat back down under it and began drinking.

We always brought beer and wine and soda pop and food in coolers with us because we intended to be gone all day. But we intended to be gone together. As Aunt Betty and Mom didn't drink beer, they turned to the rest of the gallon jug of Gallo wine and the Seven-Up and made themselves wine coolers. I floated on the water on my raft.

The wind gusted again and down came the tarp and up came aunt, Mom, and me as we reset the tarp. The next wine coolers had significantly less Seven-Up in them than the first ones. I was bored. The dog was a nervous wreck.

As the tarp took to falling down more frequently, my aunt and my mom took to drinking more wine than wine cooler and they no longer helped when they yelled out for me to come raise the tarp. I think the dog felt sorry for me because he started hanging out with me near the water's edge. (Or else he was just smart and realized the tarp was just coming down again.) In the condition they were in, the women didn't want me actually on the water any longer.

I knew they'd crossed the line into straight wine when they both started singing. For my aunt to sing was no big deal: she'd been an entertainer in her childhood and during the 30s and 40s. For my mom to sing took actual hard tipsiness at the very least. 

By this time, the guys had been gone for something like 3 or 4 hours. We could pee in the lake, but you didn't do more than that, and guess what? There was no boat to take me to the bathrooms on the other side when I needed to do more. I had access to Kleenex, sand, and rocks, way up from our little day-campsite. This did not improve my mood, but it sure seemed hilarious to my mom and aunt. I was lucky there were no rattlesnakes.

When the guys finally arrived back, they found me sitting next to the lake, throwing small stones into the water. The dog was sitting next to me. Behind us lay a tarp. The two largest lumps under the tarp were singing, in very good harmony I might add, especially given the amount of wine they'd drunk (the jug was empty) and my mother's insistence that she was tone-deaf. The guys swore they had heard the singing all the way across the lake. 

I climbed into the boat and refused to come out. The men had to practically lift the women into the boat as they weren't in any shape to actually climb in themselves. Then the guys had to pack everything up and load the boat because my mom, my aunt, and I were done for the day. I think they had to make two trips and just left the boys to watch over the rest of our stuff.

I don't remember that evening at all: I probably dug out a book and tucked myself into the camper and read, completely disgusted with the rest of the family. Where had the guys been? Oh, they'd skied around a bit, then they decided to gas up the boat. Then they asked the mechanic to look at something on the boat. Then they started talking about boats with other men who had obviously also left their womenfolk behind on a blanket somewhere. Even the boys got bored because they weren't skiing.

This has become one of my favorite stories. As an adult, I can completely appreciate my mom and my aunt in this story. In this situation, I think that I, too, would drink myself silly and sit underneath a fallen tarp, singing my lungs out. I mean, really, what else was there to do?