Sustaining annual summer traditions
To learn how to cook a dish well, you have to make it at least 10 times.
That’s what’s Jack Shu, a retired California Parks superintendent, grasped from his mother. He’s applied that maxim to his other endeavors, too. Each summer, he leads a pilgrimage to Sing Peak in Yosemite to help bring attention to the many contributions of pioneering Chinese immigrants to the creation of the national park.
Earlier this month, Shu finished his fifth pilgrimage, and he plans to lead at least another five, a goal he made from the outset. “For special events, it takes three to five years to become something that people look forward to and also expect and want,” he said.
I’ve been thinking about summer traditions, and what it takes to get one established among friends and family, whether it’s a trip to the beach where several generations gather every July or an annual visit to Lake Tahoe. As the years go by, such excursions can be a struggle to sustain.
A friend of my husband’s used to organize a huge car camping trip every summer, back when we were in our mid- to late 20s. On what turned out to be the last one, the organizer vowed to keep it going. She was sipping from her red plastic cup — water, not beer, it turns out. She was pregnant, but the rest of us didn’t know it yet. After that year, most everyone started having kids, moved away, or our lives otherwise spun out of orbit.
With the twins, we’ve started summer traditions of our own, to Yosemite’s Housekeeping Camp and to Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. For me, the charm of going to the same place year after year is seeing how much has changed — not at the locale, but in the twins.
Our first year at Housekeeping, we hung out with family friends, floating in the Merced River and joining the crowds at Lower Yosemite Falls. This year, the twins climbed onto a trail-abike (converts your bike into a bicycle built for two) and we pedaled around the valley, over stone bridges and under towering trees. We ended up at the Ahwahnee Hotel — pardon me, the Majestic — while the kids cartwheeled and somersaulted on the lawn and the adults relaxed.
Next year, the twins might be big enough for us to rent an inflatable raft (minimum weight, 50 pounds), and if we wait until after their birthday, they can try horseback riding (minimum age, 7). Our capabilities and possibilities as a family grow each year.
As for the Boardwalk, the first time we visited, the Logger’s Revenge terrified the twins, and terrified me. They had just turned 4. What if they flew out of my arms on the steep drop? My husband rode in the back with Gege, and I got in front with Didi. Up and up the log climbed and then we floated gently on the fiberglass river high above the beach. Up ahead, we could see the drop-off. I tightened my arms around Didi, and with a shriek, we plunged down, getting soaked. By day’s end, the twins rode it five times total. As we pulled out of the parking lot, they asked when we could come back again.
The attractions I remember best from my childhood have remained the same: the Big Dipper, the creaky wooden roller coaster, and the colorful Sky Glider that transports you over the people far below. Our family always arrives as soon as the Boardwalk opens, greeted by the smell of the ocean, fried foods and cotton candy and sunblock, the screams high above, and the glimmer of the Pacific.
Our second year, Gege was tall enough for the Space Race bumper cars but Didi wasn’t, to his great disappointment. Third time’s a charm: We all made the cut this summer, and our family piled in, spinning, crashing and hollering.
The joy from our summer trips has seemed surreal recently, in a world gone apocalyptic. We momentarily escape, only to return to the threat of nuclear war and horrific neo-Nazi attacks in Charlottesville.
But such trips have also never felt more precious, and remain what it means to be a part of our family. Just the other day, the twins dug up a rainbow-striped burro — I consider it as our pride burro — that we won as a carnival prize. We have a large one and small one.
“We need to go back,” Didi said. “You can win another small one and another big one. Small, small, big, big. Just like us.”
For me, the charm of going to the same place year after year is seeing how much has changed — not at the locale, but in the twins.