The Traditional Tradition

Ever since my mother was a little girl her family has taken a week out of the summer to go to the Poconos for a reunion of sorts. That tradition is still very much alive and the first week of August every year, we find ourselves packing up and moving into a cabin for a vacation of merriment, good company, and lots of games.

Since it's conception we've moved through three different places. The first was called Twin Willows, the second Tall Trees, and the third and current place is called Countryside. Although I loved Tall Trees with a passion growing up due to it's wonderful location just down the road from Carousel Park, I have grown to love Countryside with an equal passion and admire the Strand Family for keeping it so welcoming year after year.

When we were younger, we'd play Manhunt and Wolfie out in the fields. As we grew older we'd sit around the gazebo, sneaking beer from our parents, and play card games betting dimes and losing our money to a different cousin each night.

Now that my generation of cousins is grown and all of us (save two or three) are in, or have graduated college, things are a little different. We only get to come up for the weekends and try to cram a full week of shopping at the Crossings, visiting the China Buffet, or Gabel's, and hanging by the pool playing cards into two days. We bring along significant others and sip beer and share stories while the next generation of cousins run around our ankles.

It's a great feeling, knowing I have so much family and even when we haven't seen one of the cousins for almost a decade (which actually happened this year), it's easy to just catch up and fall right back into the old lazy routines of mocking, trying to toss one another in the pool, and chasing each other up the grassy hill.

But sometimes it's also sad. I love having this set time when I get to see the extended family, but we all live along Long Island and in the Bronx...some in New Jersey, but it takes a 2-3 hour ride to Stroudsburg to get us together. I mean, really! My generation is spread out across the East Coast now that some of us have settled in places near our alma maters. But we're all still relatively close and we don't see each other until August each year.

It's odd getting old. There's still a part of me that waits for the rain to pour down on the valley of cabins so I can get on my bathing suit and roll down the wet grass of the hill, trapes down into the stream, run through the poison ivy, and swing on the metal playground with all my cousins. (Yes, we seriously did all this during a thunderstorm and it was lovingly nicknamed the "Idiot Run" after we realized how many stupid things we'd done.)

Tradition is a funny thing. I can't wait to make traditions with my own family later on in life. Maybe I'll get to point at my kids and say, "Idiot" when they return from their own version of an Idiot Run like my father did to us.