Not the usual Florida afternoon downpour followed by suffocating humidity and 90-degree temperatures, but all-day rain showers and unusually cool weather. It came down in buckets as my three siblings and I pouted by the fogged windows.
My resourceful mother produced Mad Libs and secret stashes of treats. We wrote scatological stories, played board games, napped and snacked and laughed. In an era before tablet computers or even the Internet, we filled the day together. The weather will get better, we wished out loud, getting ready for bed as the unrelenting rain pelted the roof.
But it didn’t. For days and days it rained.
Cabin fever set in. The sibling conflicts increased. My parents joined us at the window, watching the deluge with mounting despair. We invented games of fishing for Goldfish crackers on the kitchen table and made costumes of bags and foil. We watched it rain and rain.
At the end of the week, we risked a soggy, desperate field trip to Key West. We got mediocre burgers at Margaritaville, toured Hemingway’s home and spotted a few six-toed cats. We posed by Southernmost Point, which is just 90 miles from Cuba. That night we went to a fancy seafood restaurant with tablecloths and thick leather-bound menus. We ate conch fritters and laughed at this crazy vacation, the irony of being in The Sunshine State. I’m sure someone spilled something.
At some point the rain did stop, which felt miraculous. Pictures of the trip show a tanned and smiling group, our hair frizzy and bleached from the sun and salt. My sisters are no longer little girls but still seem little to me; my brother and I are on the edge of teenager-hood. My parents look so very young; younger than I am at this writing.
As we loaded up the van and drove away on our last day, I had a sense of finality. I didn’t know it at the time, but it would be the last year that all six of us went to the Keys together. I was headed to high school, focused on band and college aspirations and summer jobs. Vacations would become logistically more difficult to manage and were eventually relegated to faded photos in the albums my mother arranged.
I took for granted that we would always be together.
If my travels have taught me anything, it’s that the people on a journey make it most worthwhile, not the destination. I’d give anything to go back to that crowded room and play Yahtzee with my family while the rain pounds on the roof.
This summer, my Mom, my siblings, and our families will get together for the first complete family vacation in years. We are all parents now and it will fall to us to entertain and protect our brood. I am excited to slip into that casual vacation routine of bathing suits and cheese fries, flip flops and tan lines.
We will sit around in hotel chairs and talk about those days in the Keys, of our Dad and how much we miss him, of how big our kids are getting and how life rushes by. I hope we will watch the sunset and take lots of pictures that we can look at someday and remember our time together with a smile.
And I hope it doesn’t rain.