What I Did on my Summer Vacation

How did you feel about this beginning of school assignment every year? Did you love it because you always had tons of exciting things on your summer calendar? Weren’t you the lucky one!

Did you hate it because summer was one long, hot, boring day after another with only chores and daytime TV to pass the time?  Poor baby!

If we could gather all of our old essays together, we’d realize that our summers are a mix of thrills, chills, and watching the dust motes wavering in the blazing afternoon sun, much like our lives. While I’ve always, always loved summer, I didn’t always look forward to writing that essay. Sometimes summer was mostly a bummer, you know?

Like the summer we (the whole family, including me) forgot my birthday. Which happens to be on the first day of summer. Total bummer.

Or the summer I had foot surgery. It was all barefoot, but no sand for me!

Probably the worst essay to write was when I entered the third grade. Talk about a bummer of a summer. My mother was hugely pregnant so we didn’t do our regular trips to the beach or the lake. Feeling guilty, Mom let me go with the Sunday School class to a lake outing. I was thrilled! So grown up. So independent. Off with the big kids and no Mama. Woo-hoo!

Except I was only eight and couldn’t swim as well as I thought I could. You guessed it–I almost drowned. I was happy to get home to Mama that day. And Mama never made another decision based on guilt.

Unfortunately, that summer got worse. My Granny died from a stroke a few weeks before school started. I’d just come to grips with my grief when, on the the second day of school, Mrs. McCance gave us the dreaded What I Did on my Summer Vacation assignment.

Of course, I burst into tears. Poor Mrs. McCance took me outside and asked what the problem was. “My Granny died and that’s all I did all summer,” I sobbed.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I really am. But, surely you did something else.”

“Well, I almost drowned,” I managed to choke out.

She gave me a big hug and said, “Well, why don’t you write a made up story for me. Something you wish you had done this summer.”

I sniffed and nodded, and wrote one of my first short stories. Though it was admittedly a tough summer for me, it wasn’t a total loss.

But this summer, THIS SUMMER of 2009, I’d love to have an essay assignment to write! I had a fabulous summer! Here are few highlights.

I water skied.

I roller skated. Backwards, no less!

I traveled in our motorcoach.

I swam.

I played in the sand.

I biked. I played tennis. I read.

I visited Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.

I played with my grand-girl, my great-nephew, and my wonderful nephew.

We grilled hot dogs, roasted marshmallows and I saw the Milky Way for the very first time.  Mostly, I was a kid again.

This summer was simply a stunner!

Let me know what you’d write about in your back-to-school essay on What I Did on my Summer Vacation. Hopefully, your summer was a stunner, too. But, if life threw you a bummer of a summer, on a large or small scale, take Mrs. McCance’s advice: Write a story about the summer you wish you’d had.

I can’t wait to read all about your adventures. That will extend our summer just a wee bit more, won’t it?