Summer Vacation - Camilla Basham

My family never went on summer vacation as a kid; there was no place to go. At least that’s what my mother would tell us. So, after dragging through a winter where the temperature never got below sixty degrees and a spring that stayed around eighty, we would brace ourselves to withstand a summer in the hundreds with the added ingredients of stifling humidity and mosquitoes that were so large they could have registered for their own zip code.

Our old wooden house was on the edge of a lake, but the lake was so filthy that one would never dream of entering it. Well, some did, but I could never bring myself to voluntarily submerge myself in liquid the color of feces, and pretty close to the odor of it as well.

One day while my brother and I were fishing for catfish, he pushed me off the old rickety wooden pier and I hit the water with my heart in my throat. Completely submerged I opened my eyes and could see nothing but darkness and raising my head out of the water to catch my breath, could smell nothing but rotting algae and the exhaust from the shrimp boats. It was like entering some other world of unknown darkness that I could not climb out of quickly enough.

After bracing myself against the cypress trees I grabbed the edge of the pier, hoisted myself back up and ran barefoot back to the house, trying to make it safely inside before the evening mosquito truck made it’s rounds spraying a mist of pesticide that would settle sickeningly with the humid evening stench.

Once safely inside I stood in my lake drenched clothes and pressed my face against the window waiting for the flashing orange lights and the warning siren to round the corner, all along wondering if mom was right and there really was no place to go.