I was a lucky kid in many ways, but I was especially fortunate in terms of family vacations. My brother and sister and I were able to make yearly trips to Disneyland and Carmel, one-off trips to places like Chicago and Las Vegas for my mom’s medical conferences, and a number of trips over the years with our grandma and cousins (and without our parents). These were always interesting vacations, as my grandma did the grandma thing and let us make most of the decisions while we were with her. This resulted in quite a few interesting moments, like the time my brother insisted he didn’t need sunscreen at the beach and then ended up with such a horrible sun burn that she considered taking him to the hospital.
One of the earliest of these trips with Grandma Hook (which she was always called despite absolutely detesting this name) was when I was in 9th grade and she took my sister and me to Hawaii. My grandma had an old friend who owned a condo on the island of Kauai, and she agreed to let us stay there for about a week over spring break. For some reason, Grandma Hook was under the impression that we would be doing some form of “roughing it,” so she brought a number of interesting items, like alarm clocks, in case we were without basic necessities. Exactly how alarm clocks would have helped if we had indeed been in some sort of primitive shack I have no idea, but, at least in her mind, she had come prepared. Continue reading “Welcome to Paradise”
