Traditions

I loved growing up in the sticks on Long Island. We lived close to the beach, so we practically lived there all summer. I used to race sailboats in the bay and go to private beaches on Fire Island and camp overnight. I canoed in 4 different rivers. I would spend time every summer in Sag Harbor with my grandmother and her sister. We would visit the whaling museum and spend time on the front porch telling stories eating homemade cheesecake and drinking unsweetened iced tea.

I could ride my bike a mile and a half from home at 9 years old without my parents freaking out. My neighbors had horses, chickens and goats. We could ride the horses and feed the chickens and goats anytime we wanted.

My brothers and I fished in the nearby river and swam in it too. We used a stick, string, and a safety pin for the rod and rolled up bread or freshly-dug up worms for bait. We had to dodge bees and mud bogs to get there, but we loved it.

The local lake was our natural aquarium and we would capture tadpoles and frogs and them have them race each other. We thought ice skating indoors was strange. There is something wrong about Zambonied ice.

The woods had "whoop-de-doos" in them naturally and we rode our bikes over them zealously until dark. The property next to ours had an old fashioned freshwater pump like I saw on Little House on the Prairie. We had tree houses and underground forts. We had impromptu kickball games and bike races. We played manhunt until way past our bedtime in the summer. In the winter, we would build igloos on both sides of the driveway and street and have snowball fights.

We used to go skiing every year with my parents best friends and their kids upstate. We all learned together and still have great fun recalling our mis-adventures.

At Halloween, my dad always made it special by dressing up in some crazy way and scaring the bejeezus out of the teenagers. Our house had candles burning and scary music playing. One year he chained himself up to the tree in our front yard with enough leeway so that he could climb to the branches above and jump down just as the kids were leaving. He carried an axe. It was great.

We used to go apple picking at a local orchard. The same farm had peaches and corn, so when they were ready, we used to pick those too. And pumpkins. How much fun is it to trapse through a pumpkin patch looking for the biggest or the most oddly shaped?

Honey used to go to Long Beach Island with his cousins and spent time at waterskiing camp on Lake Champlain. He had traditional Sunday dinners in Little Italy with his grandparents and the rest of the family.

Now that we live too close to the city, I feel an overwhelming sense of tradition and outdoor activities that I want to pass down to Miranda and E. How I want to give them the same opportunities for the best memories that they can take with them to adulthood. I want them to realize that the world didn't always revolve around playdates and things that cost money. You could be carefree and have a great time entertaining yourself wandering through the park or catching fireflies.

We took the first step this year by going apple picking this past weekend. We took pictures and climbed trees and ate apple cider donuts. We let the juice dribble off our chins from the Juna Golds. I want this to happen every year on the first Saturday of October. I want the kids to remember these things like I do.