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A Simple Truth
By rdaprix | July 13, 2010
As professionals we sometimes forget the simplest truth about communication. At its most basic level, it is really about human connections. I’m reminded of this fact as I anticipate our annual family vacation on the Maine coast this and every August. A college roommate used to say that this was the best part of any vacation—the simple anticipation of the joy ahead. When we were getting ready to go home for Christmas or the summer ahead in the hasty, stressful days of preparation and exams, he would always say, “Rog, enjoy it now. This is the best part because once the vacation starts, it’s almost over.”
At first I thought that his insight was pessimistic. Through the years, however, I learned that there was a wisdom in his view that the anticipation is the real source of pleasure. But that’s usually not true of our family gathering of 17 of us, including our adult children, their spouses and 7 grandchildren in a network of cottages where after all these years we are regarded as more than ‘summah people.’
What has always been so great about this time is that we can totally disconnect from modern technology because our cottages are completely outside of the range of high-speed—or even low-speed—connections. In the beginning our cottage didn’t even have what we now call a land line. The only potential intruder is the FedEx driver, whose services we usually manage to ignore.
The absence of such things when the kids were small forced us to talk and to listen to one another’s ideas, visions, aspirations and fears. Over a game of Old Maid or Monopoly, we had plenty of time to ‘commune,’ which my dictionary defines so well as ‘to communicate intimately.’ Those times cemented relationships that are so deep in every one of our hearts that we find it unthinkable to not return each year, regardless of how we are now scattered or how busy our lives might otherwise be.
Today Old Maid has given way to long adult dinners at one or other of the network of cottages we occupy. But the games continue for the second generation of kids for whom the trip to Maine is as treasured as it used to be for their parents, who counted the intervening days until we packed up the car in terms of the number of ‘sleeps’ remaining until we began the long drive.
In the cottage my wife and I occupy there is a tradition we have faithfully honored for 40 summers. The original owners, now long deceased, and their surviving son have always kept a logbook handy for their various guests to record their experiences in the cottage that sits prominently on a rocky ledge 20 or 30 feet above the waves that alternately retreat, collide, foam and throw an occasional spray high against the rocks. The stack of old logbooks is a testament to the magic of the place and a communication of the comings and goings of family members from childhood to college to jobs to marriages and births. Only happy thoughts are recorded in the log book. There is no formal prohibition, but the communications are touching, thoughtful and often wistful for such a simple existence.
My long ago roommate was right. This is the best time because it’s full of anticipation without the realization that the actual days will fly faster than we ever want. But oh the communication!
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