Sawyer, Michigan—that’s my happy place. It’s not where I’ve spent the most time. Dennis and I never went there together. But for one week out of every summer (and countless weekends) from fourth grade until well into my 20s, I was at Tower Hill Camp in Sawyer, Michigan.

It started as just a place to go in the summer for church camp. We’d sing songs, do skits, have cabin cleaning contests, do arts and crafts, worship, go to the beach, and climb Mount Baldy at the Warren Dunes. As I got older and became a counselor and eventually a director, we passed down the traditions of bonfires on the beach watching the sunset on the lake to tricking the kids into climbing Baldy at 4 in the morning to watch the sunrise when they were too young to realize it was going to rise behind them. I mean, when the sun sets on the lake, it’s not going to rise on the lake, right? But fourth graders really aren’t that smart. 😜

Reverend Jim used to lead a chant of “I am somebody!” because “God doesn’t make mistakes…except for the avocado pit…and I’m not an avocado pit.” We sang about Father Abraham with many sons, which eventually became Father Porpoise Head with many dudes. I had a counselor-in-training one year who reinforced the morning wake-up when I told my campers that I would take them to the dining hall in their sleeping bags if they didn’t get up. They didn’t believe me until Amber told them I did it to her. (She wasn’t lying.) We wrote letters and left them in God’s Mailbox.

I made lifelong friends over the years at Tower Hill, cherished memories, and somewhere along the way, it became a place where I find my peace. I can’t explain it. There’s just something about it. I can walk around the camp at night without a flashlight, knowing exactly where I am and without any fear. It makes me feel more like a part of the entire universe. It centers me.

After Dennis passed, I rented one of the cottages and took Corinne and my niece for a weekend. It wasn’t as peaceful as I would have liked. It was three weeks after Dennis had died, so Corinne and I were both struggling with our own manifestations of grief. But it still helped me. Corinne wrote a letter to her dad and left it in God’s Mailbox, and I think that helped her too.

I can’t always get away to Michigan for a weekend though, so I created an oasis in my backyard…just a little gazebo with some comfortable furniture where I can sit outside, read a book, drink some wine, take a nap. I even bought a tabletop Zen garden. It’s not Tower Hill, but it’s a solid alternative. Clearly, being close to nature is what makes the difference.

Yesterday, we returned from a nature-filled, relaxing cruise on the Disney Fantasy—Corinne, me, and two of our very best friends. When we took our first Disney cruise in January 2020, Dennis feared it would be his only cruise. It was, and it ended up being our last family vacation as well.

I knew this one would be a very different vacation. Dennis always packed as many things as he could into every day of every trip. We’d have fun, and I would come home needing a vacation from our vacation.

For this one, I intentionally booked a cruise with two full days at sea. We reached our first port about 40 hours after we left Port Canaveral, Florida. Our stateroom boasted a private verandah, and we only planned one excursion (because who wouldn’t want to swim with the dolphins given the opportunity).

I spent quite a bit of time sitting on the verandah watching the ocean and even more time lying on a couch near our favorite Vista Cafe, reading a book or letting my mind wander, and drinking apple elderflower iced tea. Corinne discovered a love for iced vanilla lattes. And Bingo…we played a lot of Bingo.

I enjoyed exploring the ports with no plan in place, and I loved just letting myself be taken care of. It was healing, and it brought me a lot of peace.

Now even better, I have two more weeks before going back to work. Peaceful and healing indeed.

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Book Review

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
5 Stars for Vacationland by Meg Mitchell Moore

384 pages
Publisher: William Morrow
Publication Date: June 14, 2022
I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and William Morrow.

Publisher’s Description

Louisa has come to her parents’ house in Maine this summer with all three of her kids, a barely-written book, and a trunkful of resentment. Left behind in Brooklyn is her husband, who has promised that after this final round of fundraising at his startup he will once again pick up his share of the household responsibilities. Louisa is hoping that the crisp breeze off Penobscot Bay will blow away the irritation she is feeling with her life choices and replace it with enthusiasm for both her family and her work.

But all isn’t well in Maine. Louisa’s father, a retired judge and pillar of the community, is suffering from Alzheimer’s. Louisa’s mother is alternately pretending everything is fine and not pretending at all. And one of Louisa’s children happens upon a very confusing and heartfelt letter referring to something Louisa doesn’t think her father could possibly have done.

Louisa’s not the only one searching for something in Maine this summer. Kristie took the Greyhound bus from Pennsylvania with one small suitcase, $761, and a lot of baggage. She’s got a past she’s trying to outrun, a secret she’s trying to unpack, and a new boyfriend who’s so impossibly kind she can’t figure out what she did to deserve him. But she can’t keep her various lives from colliding forever.

As June turns to July turns to August, secrets will be unearthed, betrayals will come to light, and both Louisa and Kristie will ask themselves what they are owed and what they owe others.

************

Main Characters:

• Kristie Turner – left a boyfriend and an alcohol addiction in Miami three years prior to be with her mother in Pennsylvania; after losing her mother to cancer, traveling to Rockland, Maine, with information about Louisa and her family
• Louisa McLean – tenured professor of history at New York University, currently wrapping up a sabbatical and working on a book that she is hoping to finish over the summer at her parents’ home in Maine
• Steven McLean – co-founder of a podcast startup in Brooklyn called All Ears; stays at home in New York for the summer to prime the company with the hopes of selling it in a couple of years
• Matty, Abigail, and Claire McLean – Louisa and Steven’s children (12, 10, and 7, respectively)

     

I really enjoyed Meg Mitchell Moore’s Vacationland. I expected something volatile with a lot more conflict, but this story feels more like two women who find their truths.

While everything is written in the third person, the perspective shifts primarily between Kristie and Louisa with a few chapters from Matty’s viewpoint as well as a couple other characters. Louisa’s summer should be spent finishing her book before her sabbatical ends. Instead, she finds herself coming to terms with her father’s Alzheimer’s, her mother’s future plans for his care, her lack of support from her husband Steven, and eventually Kristie’s appearance on the scene.

Kristie arrives in Rockland, Maine, with an interest in Louisa’s family but unsure what she wants to do once she arrives. It’s relatively easy to figure out why she’s there, but before she can take any action, she meets Danny, one of the gardeners for Louisa’s parents. She’s secretive about who she is and why she’s in Maine, saying that she just needed a change. We all know how that’s going to come back around for her, don’t we?

I found myself completely caught up in this book. Moore’s descriptions set the scene and allow the reader to picture the beauty of the town and the ocean views. Her characters are amazingly written. Matty is almost 13, and while he’s planning to spend the summer improving his time for cross-country, he finds himself in the throes of a first crush. Ten-year-old Abigail’s letters to her father become increasingly urgent as the summer progresses and she feels the tension in the house even though she doesn’t understand what’s causing it. And Claire is just a typical youngest child, a seven-year-old with no filter and no fear.

I almost knocked this down half a star because there were a couple of sections that felt really choppy. A character would be thinking about something from the past, and their thoughts were clipped and erratic. I also would have loved an epilogue. But in the end, I decided that these didn’t take away anything, and certainly not enough to knock the rating down.

This is a story about home and healing and relationships and learning that what feels important in the moment may be the most unimportant thing of all.

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