Madness On Little Squam Lake: Our Summer Vacation

Just over a year old, Gus completed his ninth cross-country trek (eighteenth if you count both ways). If he could say more than a few words, which he can’t, he’d probably say he had a heck of a vacation on the East Coast this summer.

Instead, he just smiles and says “ball.” As in, he had a ball.

Gus had a ball

We touched down in Logan and stayed that first night with our good friends Peg and Dave. Before putting Gus to bed I set up his video monitor and turned on the camera. The image I saw on the flickering, Poltergeist-like snowy screen was a baby I didn’t recognize sprawled out in a crib I didn’t recognize.

Gus, after all, was very much awake and downstairs playing with Bixie and Peg.

When I realized this, and since Peg’s house is old and her floor boards creaky, I felt the hair on the back of my neck raise at the possibility I was looking at a ghostly baby from the home’s distant past.

It took a minute for my heart rate to return to normal, whereupon it occurred to me that my monitor must be picking up the signal of a baby next door or down the street. At least that’s what I’m telling myself.

The next morning we visited with my brother Brandon in a park in Boston’s South End. Gus rolled around on a blanket and attracted his fair share of hugs and smooches. Then it was off to my parents’ house in Georgetown, where we stayed for a few days before heading to Little Squam Lake in New Hampshire (where On Golden Pond was filmed, in part. There were indeed loons bobbing about in the gentle currents. And yes, I’m talking about birds, not the local yahoos).

Before Squam it was relaxing at my folks’ house in G-Town. Gus enjoyed the pool, I think, once he got over the initial shock of the chilly water. My mom threw a little b-day party for Gus, who just turned 1, and she whipped up a couple of tasty home-cooked meals (“more balsamic drizzle, anyone?”).

B-day boy

During the day Bixie and I headed to Plum Island for some sand and sun. Bummer to see all of the beach erosion, and I felt sad for the homeowners whose major investments were teetering precariously on the edge of destruction. Come to think of it, that fairly describes millions of American homeowners.

After the beach we stopped by Michael’s Harborside in Newburyport for some delish seafood. Bixie scarfed down a lobster, after holding it up and scaring Gus, and at that point it truly began to feel like vacation to us. My shoulders felt less tense.

Fast forward to Little Squam Lake in New Hampshire. Hot has hell. Humid as hell. Oppressively so, which was fitting in that it forced all of us to swim about 10 times per day.

Bixie’s parents rented a kick ass lodge at the water’s edge. It was the third time we’ve stayed in the rustic seven-bedroom place, and this time was vastly different than the others. Whereas in past years we’d stay up until 3 a.m. sipping cocktails and playing poker, this year we were all busy scrambling after little kiddos. This time the place was like a sprawling lakeside nursery.

Bucket O' Fun

Gus, of course, is one baby. Then you had Bixie’s sister Ali and her husband Josh (Bones) and their little six-month-old lollipop-faced girl named Evie. You had my wife’s other sister, Nicole & her man Todd, and her two kids (3-year-old Sadie and few-months-old Page). Meanwhile, back in Mass, Bixie’s brother Josh and his wife Carolyn had a little boy named Teddy (during our vacation!). He’s only a couple weeks old now. One nickname already in play is “Teddy Ballgame.” If you know baseball you’ll understand the reference. If not, you’re free to draw your own inferences.

Anyway, this year was all about the kids. Toys and formula bottles and diapers and little bits of cheese and fruit and tubs of yogurt. Cries and squeals and tantrums and giggles. Grunting noises and 50 proof suntan lotion and grass stuck to sticky bodies and reddened cheeks and slimy fingers.

My kingdom for a triscuit?

A few times a day, when a few of the kids happened to nap at the same time, the adults would steal away for a spirited game of badminton or horse shoes and then a restorative dip in the lake. Very fun. Very summer vacation-like.

Two bad bits of news about the trip: Bixie’s dad Eli sliced open his foot on a fresh water clam, requiring stitches. We decided to bet on how many stitches he’d need, and Bixie was the winner (four). The poor guy was relegated to a lawn chair for the rest of the trip, which I think he secretly enjoyed since he’d been running around like a teenager after the kiddies.

The other annoying thing was that on the last day I stepped on a yellow jacket on the way to the horse shoe pits. Yowch.

My favorite thing? We did so much that it’s hard to narrow it down to one thing, but if I had to pick it’d be the boat rides with Bones’ dad, Mo Lafrenier. Josh and I went tubing (which means we got dragged behind the boat on an inflated object that resembled an oyster shell pillow). And Josh also did some impressive wake boarding. I tried four times to get up; my hips never got above water.

But the best thing about the boat rides was when we took Gus out on the lake. We strapped him into a puffy life jacket and sat with him on the bow of the boat as it glided through the shimmering waves. He wore a pretty constant smile as he looked almost stoically out on the horizon. For a while he was smiling so brightly that all of his teeth were showing. His face seemed to be saying “I feel truly ALIVE at last!” His mom was having a blast and Gus, as noted in the introductory paragraphs, had a ball.

Gus feels so ALIVE!

The weirdest thing that happened this vacation? Okay, check this out. One night I was coughing a lot and waking up Gus (who was sleeping in our room because it blessedly had an air conditioner). So I decided to sleep downstairs in the Great Room on the couch. About 20 minutes or so after I flopped down I felt something jump on my legs, like a cat or (shiver) a skunk.

But no. Turns out it was Bixie’s mom Claudia. She was checking under my blanket because she was trying to find Nicole’s daughter Sadie, who had gone to bed that night in Claudia and Eli’s room on an air mattress.

But now she evidently was missing, and so Claudia was frantically saying something to me but I couldn’t hear her because my ears were almost completely blocked from lake water. I saw her shuffle back down the hallway, waving her arms around oddly.

I didn’t know Sadie was missing at this point, so I figured Claudia was probably sleepwalking, since her daughter Bixie sometimes whispers conspiratorially in my ear while she’s completely out cold. Once she actually yelled “steamroller!” and rolled her entire body over mine – and she was dead asleep at the time.

So, I turn over and try to ignore her. That lasts about five seconds until the dim hall light gets flicked on, and this is when the scene starts getting nuts. At the end of the long hallway I see the outline of tall Eli in his two-piece pajamas, but I can’t see his face. He’s limping dramatically through the shadows down the hallway toward me (his foot has been hobbled, remember). Since I was half-asleep I worried that perhaps Eli had become unhinged and that, worse, he could be dragging an axe at his side.

My irrational thoughts at the time: “Had he just ‘offed’ Claudia in the bedroom? Had she been trying to wake me up to save her from impending doom?”

How such a kind man looks so scary is a function of the perceived seriousness of the situation, which now has nearly everyone in the house awake, the lights on, as the search party for Sadie gets worked into a lather.

But the hoopla ends nearly as soon as it begins: Eli and I notice the doors to the house are locked (which confirms that Sadie is in fact still in the house). Claudia at this point – and I say this with the utmost affection – has dissolved into a blithering mess. She’s whimpering and frantically looking in every direction like a game hen trying to escape the butcher.

Nicole is understandably right there with Claudia in Frantic Land, and she literally collapses in my arms when I point to the pair of little feet sticking out from under Eli and Claudia’s bed. “Thank God,” Nicole gasped, and then crumpled.

Crisis averted at the tender young hour of 4 a.m. As you can imagine, my dreams over the next couple of hours were insane. One of them involved lots of ducks furiously typing on a keyboard and squawking orders at me.
In the end, it was a memorable trip. The kids all had a great time and the adults had a great time making sure they did.

I don’t know what the next year holds, or if we’ll again make the trip to Little Squam Lake. But what I do know is this: Bixie and I will have two children by then.

And if the second child is anything like the first, we’ll have a ball next summer.

Crouching Bixie, Hidden Baby

Summer scene