Skipping Rocks

Last summer my husband and I took our ten year old twins on vacation in Tolland, Connecticut. We have a few friends and relations who have politely intimated (repeatedly) that perhaps we are a little off-beat, as a general rule, and this probably did not change their opinion.   

It appears that Tolland is conspicuously missing from the “Top Ten Vacation Spots” of, well, pretty much everyone. On top of that, this was by far our most expensive vacation, as we bought a house more or less on impulse while we were there. This did not seem to reassure the aforementioned friends and relations.

So of course this summer we are going back. And this time it will be for good.

During the flight to Hartford I sat next to our daughter, who spent most of the time quietly reading or dismembering gummy bears and reassembling the parts into colorful patchworks of sucrose goo like some juvenile Dr. Frankenstein. 

My husband sat next to our son - who was very, very excited about the trip. He talked non-stop for 3,000 miles, pausing only long enough to see what all the buttons on the seat did. He asked a lot of questions, including some intriguing ones like how does a plane fly upside down? What happens when two black holes hit each other?

One interesting thing about really cool questions like these is that it virtually guarantees that parents (well, us, anyway) will instantly leap to the conclusion that their child must be some sort of Einstein and spend a lot of time trying to answer it in the best “teachable moment” way that they can, even if the answer is “I have absolutely no idea how to even begin to talk about this”. 

The kids learned long ago that this was an excellent strategy to garner long periods of our undivided attention (no mean feat in a large family - and they have four older siblings). As an added bonus it is also an effective way to delay homework, bedtime, baths, chores, etc. 

We know this. We know when they are shamelessly manipulating us this way to delay bath time or whatever. But we find ourselves almost always helpless to resist - they have us figured dead to rights in the “massage the parental ego and we can avoid soap that much longer” department… and I can always hope it may pay off eventually in some academic venue. Perhaps Tolland Middle School?

Once we arrived in Tolland we started exploring. While no one was as excited by the French Canadian Genealogy Society as I was, everyone found something to like. Crandall Park was the closest thing to a local “hot-spot” that we could find (the Electric Blue Café was not quite what we had in mind) so we headed to the park.

That was where our son learned to skip rocks. I remembered trying to skip rocks as a kid, and seeing him enjoy this so much was one of the highlights of our trip. Our daughter tried valiantly to skip her rocks but never did get a true skip – after a while she contented herself with making loud, deep, thudding splashes by simply heaving the largest rocks she could lift into the water. Any loitering fish had the good sense to leave. 

Following a pretty wooded path took us to a basketball court near the parking area. There were a few basketballs lying there, so we galumphed around and pretended we knew how to make a basket. Hopefully no one saw this – grace is not our strong point.

But there were things that we saw. Not only were basketballs conspicuously left lying around for use by the general public but the bathrooms at the lake were open and reasonably clean. The teenage lifeguards at Crandall Pond were polite and clean cut, and if they had any demonic tattoos or metal fashion appendages they were not obvious, even in bathing suits.

All of this spoke volumes about the town of Tolland, and that was just one little snippet of the time of we spent there.

We loved our realtor. She was our guide/taxi/itinerant philosopher/ general purpose Tolland resident who knew everyone and everything. She ferried us around in her minivan, showing us “all the sights”. (The ice cream at the UConn dairy is to die for!) She drove the narrow roads as only a native can, at what sometimes seemed a breathtaking velocity to those of us who are not used to trees and ravines so close to the car.  She patiently taught us the difference between country roads, routes, and neighborhood streets. We already knew what a freeway was, and there was nary a four lane express route feeding cars from the freeway to a megamall in sight. Thank God.   

Most of the houses we saw in Tolland were set in one or two acre forests of wild trees. We were delighted - no one planted them. They were not “elements” in someone’s landscape design - purchased and nurtured with great care, lest they wither and die. Deciduous trees in our area generally turn to dull browns and faded yellows in the fall, unless you count some species that “fake” fall colors such as Japanese maples, which turn a passable set of colors (by California standards) and are much prized for that. I have heard neighbors talk about having flown over places where the trees turn color, and how beautiful that was when glimpsed through a tiny airliner window at 30,000 feet. People come to Tolland to look at trees in the fall – all the locals need to do is glance out the window.  

Dr. Willet, the principal of the middle school, graciously gave us his time to show us the school. Of course at school the kids didn’t say a word about black holes or anything remotely academic. And when Dr. Willet asked them if they had any questions they restricted themselves to monosyllabic inquiries about 1) recess and 2) the food in the cafeteria. 

Sigh. 

Lest this seems too sappily one sided - we know we were shown only the good stuff. We know that nothing is as good as it seems when it is all “gussied up for company”. We know that Tolland will have its share of drawbacks, and there is no guarantee that we will be able to make a life there any better than they are here. We know that in the end it is entirely up to us to make our lives what we want them to be.

But if we don’t try, we will never know - and we have done everything we can think of to make the odds lean in our favor.  

And now, finally, after almost a year to make all the arrangements, we are on our way.