A Change of Life–Part 1

I must admit, I am a bit verclempt. I am in a bit of a quandary. Usually by now I am in full “summer-trip-planning” mode. This year, however, I am perched on the horns of a dilemma.

Always in the past, I have been planning trips to include our children, at least the two or three that were currently living at home. These trips were taken for about two weeks in the height of summer, generally the third and fourth weeks in July. Our oldest daughter, Katie, has not accompanied us on these trips for some time (about 6 years) as she “fell in love” in her junior year of high school and could not bear to be separated for an entire two weeks from her beau, (that was three suitors ago), much less to go camping!

So rather than travel with us to traverse this beautiful country and see all that it has to offer, she elected to spend her two weeks with grandma—so she could see the boy.  It was an adjustment, traveling with two children rather than three; we transitioned to a group of four, when we had long been a party of five. We always missed her when she did not join us, but had taken the route, the year before we allowed her to stay home the first time, of forcing her to accompany us and a miserable time was had by all!

Our youngest daughter, soon to turn 18, is a performer. Our hometown of Manitowoc, WI is home to one of the only entirely youth run community theatre companies in the country, the Peter Quince Performing Company. Each summer the group selects a production, often a musical, elects a director, producer, choreographer and the like, then spends from June through the end of July in nightly rehearsals. Finally, the first weekend of August, the company presents an entire production, with every bit of the work, from acting to directing to props to advertising, being done by company members who must be age 23 or younger. It is truly quite a feat—and a great learning experience. Meghan has been involved with the group for five summers now.

The first three summers, she would accompany us on our trip but take a significant amount of heat from her peers in the producing and directing roles about missing the last two weeks of rehearsal. Note: It was never a problem for Meghan—she was not the lead and always learned her songs, dances and lines very quickly and early in the summer so she was well prepared. But two summers ago, she asked to stay with Nanny so she could, perhaps land a lead role by indicating that she would have no conflicts during the summer…more to come.

For information about camping, check out Woodall’s camping articles.