On Ungratefulness 😫

I didn't like my summer vacation

All summer, and it was a tough one, I looked forward to August. There, at the end of the calendar, shone the blue jewel: our family vacation to Lake George. It would be our first such vacation: just for us, just to relax, rather than to visit family or friends or some other purpose not related to sitting in an Adirondack chair and gazing out at the glimmering mountain waters.

I had my doubts about the place we booked—the reviews were just OK, and the images of the rooms looked… rustic, and not in a cute way. But we’d be outside, I figured—maybe kayaking, or sunbathing, or at least digging holes in the sand. Who cared if the curtains and bedding were all the color of dried blood?

The drive up to Lake George was short and uneventful. Spirits were mostly high. We were remembering, I think, our first trip to Lake George together, eight years ago. We’d packed up all our earthly possessions in Jimmy’s ancient pickup truck and driven the 20 hours from Iowa City to Albany, all the time anticipating our new life together. When that felt overwhelming, or when sweat pooled on my neck, or when the tailgate ultimately rusted and collapsed off the back of the truck, I’d simply imagine the lake house we’d been invited to by my cousin’s boss. We could make it through anything, we told ourselves, and when we got there, we would be able to jump in that lake.

Baby us in the truck with 1 Missy Elliott CD

And it happened just like we planned it: we lugged our boxes into the spider-infested storage unit and drove off immediately, north, to baptize ourselves in the cool, crystalline waters that represented our new life together.

Perhaps that is youth, or at least that is innocence: to make a plan and blithely expect to see it through. This time, following our GPS carefully, we drove right past the [Redacted] Resort. Turning around again, we noticed that the giant light-up roadside sign was completely faded, inviting guests, I supposed, to an experience of their own making. It didn’t matter what the [Redacted] Resort was named—we were at LAKE GEORGE.

The cheerful attendant gave us our keys and we let ourselves into the swept-but-not mopped cabin. “Not bad,” I said, warily, looking around. We were in nature now, I assured myself. It was ok to rough it.

After we brought our bags in and set them gingerly on the floor, Rosalind declared that she wanted to go home, and burst into tears. Perhaps she was picking up on my own grim mood, one that had been brewing all week, or perhaps even all summer. There was a lot riding on this vacation, and as the afternoon sun slunk into the grimy windows, it began to illuminate what looked like decades of scummy residue smeared on the pressed wood cabinets.

“Let’s go right down to the lake,” I demanded, thinking of that years-ago symbolic dunk. We hustled into our swim gear and set out across the lengthy parking lot that lead us down to the water. Rosalind refused to hold my hand. We argued. I prevailed. Then she tripped on her Crocs and cried again. By the time we got to the dock, I was electric with exasperation.

The listing for the “resort” promised “beach-front property,” which turned out to be something of a lie. There was a pebbled shore the size of a vintage hand towel that could be accessed by scrambling down a steep hill. Alternately, there was a large-ish dock. The dock protruded out onto water just shallow enough that somebody adult-sized might not want to risk a cannonball. I looked around, plotting my entry. No one else was swimming. Behind me I saw men, horrible men in sunglasses and baseball caps, holding beer cans and fishing poles. I suddenly could not imagine stripping down to my bright red bikini. I was embarrassed, not because of my own particular body, and its various culturally designated strengths and weaknesses, but because I did not want this special, private moment of joy to be witnessed by strangers.

I looked instead for somewhere to sit down. There were warped plastic chairs, the kind you usually see set out on the curb at trash night, but each was claimed by some primal totem indicating ownership. Some had fishing equipment on them—tackle boxes or (I can only imagine) cups of worms. The chair closest to my enormous glowing white butt cheeks had an humungous vape pen on it. “You can’t sit here,” seethed the vape pen. “I got here first.”

I wrapped my shirt around my goosebumped body and turned to leave. I was embarrassed of being embarrassed and mad that I felt that way and angry at other people for existing. I hated them. I hated everyone and I hated America. It wasn’t really those men’s faults for wanting to go fishing; they weren’t stopping me from living my life; I just didn’t want to live my life with them in it. I clomped back to the hotel room, quietly raging at all men and also Jimmy, for happening to be there.

Last summer we’d also been to Lake George, and stayed at a smaller, cleaner cabin much further away from the shore. We’d gotten the last property available, it seemed, anywhere near the 32 mile lake perimeter: it was the weekend of the Lake George Open Water Swim, which last year, another lifetime ago, I competed in. This summer I was not competing, even though that had been the initial plan when booking this vacation, but the indoor pool at our gym was closed all winter and spring, and then there was often wildfire smoke outside, and then I didn’t swim, and my summer was difficult, and then I didn’t swim. I swam sometimes, but not enough. I felt bad about it, the way I feel bad about everything sometimes—the things I would like to be doing but can’t, somehow, like being an athlete, or finishing my fucking book, or wiping the grime from the cabinets in my own house.

I slammed the dirty motel room door. I took off my suit. Atop the dresser, I spotted what looked like one singular mouse shit. I peered at it optimistically, hoping it was a rogue chocolate sprinkle— it was not. It never is. I shrugged to no one. Of course there was mouse poop. Did it matter? I guessed it did not.

Jimmy returned soon after with Rosalind, who declared she was hungry. Even though it was barely 5pm, we packed up our picnic gear and went searching for the grills described in the listing. There were three, down by the water. One bent diagonally towards the grass as though it had been hit with a car. As we placed our bags on a picnic table near one of the horizontal grills, another family gathered territorially around the other one, their eyes darting around suspiciously. The sun was in my eyes. I glared.

We ate in silence, facing the lake. The hot dogs were too salty. We forgot to grill the corn. Another family arrived to play volleyball, the net positioned idiotically near the picnic tables, and of course, I was immediately hit with a ball. I switched to the far side of the picnic table, but one wood beam was missing from the seat. It was like balancing on a fence post. I lay my head down in my arms.

“Well,” said Jimmy, who often knows the right thing to say, “I really can’t wait to read about this on Mom Blog.”

Old us on the trip down. It’s like we knew it was going to be bad.

As we were finishing our terrible dinner, I watched in surprise as a middle-aged couple, the users of the other grill, began to kiss passionately at the edge of their picnic table. They pulled apart to smile at each other greedily, then leaned back for more, closing their interlude by flicking their tongues in each other’s mouths.

“This is what people mean when they say there are lizard people at the Denver airport,” said Jimmy, thoughtfully.

The next day Jimmy (who, characteristically leaned into our situation, rather than out of it, and began referring to himself as in the third person as Lake Jim) volunteered to take Rosalind on an outing so I could “relax.” The problem was, there was nowhere to relax: I couldn't sit on somebody else’s vape pen and I didn’t want to linger at the mouse motel so I rallied and went with my family to ride the Mine-ha-ha Steamboat.

The girl selling our boat tickets had a Blue Lives Matter baseball cap on. The gift shop where we’d receive a 15% discount with our boat tickets sold Blue Lives Matter flip flops. I would say not less than 30% of the merchandise for sale in the town of Lake George Village is either pro-police or pro-police adjacent, which includes a t-shirt store called “DILLIGAF,” which Lake Jim became fixated upon. After Googling it, he discovered it stands for Do I Look Like I Give A Fuck, and fantasized repeatedly about approaching someone wearing said gear and simply saying “yes.”

I saw a man in a signed MAGA sweatshirt. It looked like his first time wearing it out, like he’d been saving it for this particular vacation. I saw a person at our motel wearing a shirt that listed out the following items, presumably in order of importance:

• Friends

• Family

• Faith

• Flag

• Firearms

And, finally, my own fixation became the man wearing a shirt that read, simply and cryptically: “TRY THAT IN A SMALL TOWN.”

Try what??????? It so perfectly encapsulated the terror of the conservative viewpoint I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It demonstrates willful ignorance of what might be happening (“that”), an obtuse accusation against (everyone? no one?) and an assumption that whatever “that” is and whoever is “try”ing it is not… already in said small town. TRY WHAT?!?!?!?! ¹

Lake Jim got some sunglasses that seem to have a political agenda of their own

Readers, we enjoyed the boat ride. We all got some fresh air, mountain views, and a guided tour to every single mansion on the southern end of the lake, which was sort of delightful while also being mildly enraging, especially since we were not staying in any of them. The steamboat also had a calliope on it, on which the captain proudly performed a song so out of tune it was barely recognizable.² Rosalind got popcorn.

I realized, finally, that I’d been imagining this trip as part of a new family tradition, which meant not only did we have to live this discomfort now, but for all eternity. No! I thought to myself. Fuck fascism! We’re never coming back! And once I could let go of its forced importance, the trip improved.

Grudgingly: the pool was nice. The view of the lake was nice.³ We drove past the cabins where Georgia O’Keefe stayed. Rosalind slept all night in a grown-up bed for the first time, laying very carefully on her back with the covers pulled up to her chin. Lake Jim flicked his tongue at me repeatedly in various situations that weekend, which was both amusing and, of course, enraging.

When we checked out on Monday morning, the friendly clerk accepted the room keys and said, not un-conspiratorially, “when you come back next year, don’t book into the units on the roadside.”

“Why not,” I asked, instead of saying, “we are never coming back.”

“They aren’t renovated!” she replied, “like, at all!”

I’ve never been more grateful to be home.

Like this if you liked it! I love to be liked. Comment below… what’s a grumbling ungrateful feeling you had on a vacation you’ve been on? Please complain.

See you next week for a brief Fun Mom—school starts Wednesday so I will be knee deep in syllabi editing until then.

I hope you sleep all night long.

1. Update: I googled it and it’s a Jason Aldean song about how if you, for example, burn the flag in his small town he and his friends will round you up and kill you with their grandpa’s guns :)

2. Here is a video of the calliope being played (more artfully than was our experience). All I could think of while listening to it was that “expectation vs. reality” meme where Earth, Wind & Fire’s “September” is butchered on the recorder—here is an example of that.

3. Lake George is America’s 8th bluest body of water