My Summer Place and Those That Still Live There
A board game reminds me of summer with my family
Summer. Vacation. Family. Games.
As the temps soar, my thoughts turn to summers past. As a kid, summer usually meant road trips. We spent weeks at dude ranches, riding horses into the mountains. We invaded beaches, turning into sunburned jellyfish bait. I even suffered through an obligatory Disney trip, which would go down in my parents’ book of ways I failed them. What kid hates Disney?!
Then and now, my favorite vacations have been the simple trips home. My ultimate destination was Grandma and Grandpa’s house. Their house was more exciting than Disneyland. The food was top-notch all-you-can-eat and then a few bites more. The best part, of course, was them.
Visiting my grandparents meant gleaning generational knowledge, something I could never learn in school. And I LOVED to learn. From Grandma, I learned how to sew, crochet, and bake chocolate chip cookies with the perfect crisp. Grandpa taught me how to bait a hook, drive a boat, and what WWII felt like through his extensive storytelling. Then, there was the basement.
Their cavernous basement was a fantastical realm of make-believe. It was divided into multiple rooms: a sewing room where soldiers once slept and I made clothes for my Cabbage Patch kid, a long corridor full of theatre costumes from my mother’s youth and Grandma’s old 1940s house dresses, a terrifying sump hole next to a cinder block shower and sink (both inhabited by the Boogeyman), a laundry area, a full second kitchen, and a giant all-purpose rec room.
Every nook and cranny overflowed with mementos of years gone by. Beneath a satin settee was a box of creepy dolls in moldering clothes. An old pram in the corner held a nursery of neglected stuffed animals and plastic children, their faces frozen in antique horror. A sinister Howdy Doody puppet hung on a hook, his dead eyes shooting menacing barbs (thanks, Uncle Bob, for a fear of marionettes). Books were stacked waist-high beneath a dusty green hammock. The record player was always spinning Lawrence Welk and the ping pong table, though lilting, hosted epic tournaments. I spent many, many days in that basement playing, dancing, reading, and dreaming. Maybe day-drinking once or twice, but I digress.
In a cabinet near the old school desk was a collection of board games from the 50s and 60s. My family was all about games. The Whoopee Game, Family Feud, Twister, and Kerplunk filled the shelves. For the younger generation (they were blessed with five granddaughters), the belle of the ball was The Barbie Game: Queen of the Prom. To win, players earned money working odd jobs, became president of a club at school, bought a prom dress, gained a boyfriend, and if she was lucky, her date asked her to “go steady” so they could attend the prom.
As silly as it sounds, we all LOVED that game as evidenced by the destroyed box, tattered board, curled paper money, and wrinkled card decks. First played in the 1960s by my mom and her friends, it survived several generations of cousin fun before coming home with me after my grandmother moved out of the family home. I played it with my children a handful of times before carefully packaging it up for the day they might return home with daughters of their own and the circle would be complete.
The Barbie game has lived in the top of a closet here for five years. Before that, it lived in a hot Texas attic for a decade or two. This week, I was feeling nostalgic and pulled it down to take a stroll down memory lane. The task was bittersweet. Time hasn’t been kind to Barbie and her friends, neither have years of sticky little girl fingers. The box was destroyed years ago. The board itself is tearing. The cards are creased like practiced origami scraps. It smells like home and history and heartache.
I am struck by a sudden and devastating sense of loss. All the little girls who loved this game have grown up and left home. The mothers who spent hours playing round after round are mostly gone. My mother, the original owner, is the last of her generation. Even home has ceased to exist as it was. The basement now belongs to the highway department and my memories belong to the past.
At the bottom of the box, I found a wad of brown paper. Inside was an original Mitzi doll from my mom’s childhood collection (Note: Mitzi is Barbie’s OG frenemy produced by a competing company). The glitter from her gown had melted off and it exploded in my face like a bomb when I touched it. One of her shoes had cracked and the ribbon in her hair had disintegrated into stringy dandruff. Her red mane has been brushed so much that she needs Rogaine for the ample bald spots. (Later, my husband walked in on me hunched over the kitchen sink. He probably wondered if I’d lost my mind as he watched me gently launder Mitzi’s hair and clothes, trying to restore some dignity to the old broad.)
These spoils of childhood make me melancholy. While I treasure such great memories, there is deep longing to have one more day with those who have left us. What I wouldn’t give to be young and unfettered, sitting in an Illinois basement playing board games with my mom, grandmother, aunts, and cousins. I’d also happily accept a ride on the time machine that took me back to lazy summer days with my own brood.
Instead, I must be content that these touchstones still exist. They are proof of how fortunate I was and am in the family department. In that spirit, I spent the weekend memorializing Barbie and her friends in a new shadowbox home. I hope I can preserve them for future generations who may look back one day and feel the warmth of summer again, even when the little girls of my memories are long gone.
