bring the aunties.

everything else, including undies, optional.

Last night, our thirty-year-old station wagon limped into my parents' driveway on a slowly deflating tire. By morning, the tire was fully pancaked, pitching the rusty wagon forward like an old, loyal dog nursing a sore leg, settled in for a well-deserved rest. The backseat is littered with the smashed remains of granola bars, Starburst wrappers, and puzzle books. Dreams really do come true.

I am fresh off a week spent in Maine with my mom and dad, my three sisters, our attending partners and assorted progeny. Despite the compulsory consternation about packing, in the end I would not have been wrong to fill a duffel with only bathing suits and towels—maybe a few sweatshirts for the chillier mornings and evenings. A supply of Band-Aids and a bottle of sunscreen nursed the worst of what ailed us. What was truly indispensable, I didn't pack and wouldn't have fit in even the largest L.L.Bean tote.

James woke at dawn every morning to go fishing. He padded silently to the lake on beds of pine needles, fueled by coffee my dad had already brewed. I slept late in a room occupied by all three of my children, none of whom so much as looked in my direction upon waking. In the company of cousins and grandparents and, especially, aunties, a parent's light dims considerably. Big kids won't question popsicles for breakfast so long as there's enough to go around. Grandpas can usually be cajoled into another game of checkers. Aunties are game for walking down to the dock before the breakfast dishes have been cleared.

I won't say that inter-generational, multi-family vacationing is foolproof. There were the usual mysterious bug bites and near-misses with poisonous berries and the virus-that-shall-not-be-named. There was, more than once, a low simmering threat of temper-tantrum. Even the kids occasionally lost their cool. On one afternoon, we attempted a family excursion—my parents offering to treat all fifteen of us to a whale watching boat ride—but the gods of fog and sea mist intervened on our behalf and the trip was called off before any one of us could throw another overboard.

We didn't sightsee. We didn't hike. We never made it to the coast, despite being a few minutes from one of the more magical peninsulas on the eastern seaboard. On the road up, I clocked a small town's worth of flea markets and antique shops I would have stopped at had the circumstances been different.

Instead, we spent our six days on a wobbly aluminum dock on a truly perfect lake. We made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on honey wheat sandwich bread and snacked on salty chips sprinkled with pond water. We traded dinner duty and dirtied an astonishing number of cloth napkins. We stocked the freezer with ice cream sandwiches and the fridge with cans of seltzer. We pulled fishing hooks out of fishing nets and bore witness to the life and death of iridescent sunnies marooned in a 10-gallon bucket. An auntie-run ferry service to a rock called an island occupied the better part of one afternoon. Uncles in kayaks provided assurances against marauding pontoon boats and lurking fishes. A grandmother jumped in the lake wearing nothing but a floor-length white cotton nightgown. Sunscreen applications and life-preserver monitoring and swimming instruction were a shared project. Oozing drips from extra-large roasted marshmallows were everyone's business and no one's. Children asked to be put to bed, or else fell asleep directly in the swaying arms of people who love them.

As for me, I read an entire, perfect novel while basking in a blow-up float.

For the curious:

This book is so extremely captivating that I'm tempted to only recommend it to folks on vacation.

These non-alcoholic radlers are delicious and the perfect thing for day-drinking without consequence.

Blueberry jam with peanut butter forever and ever.

We stayed at this beloved spot.

It might be true that there's no such thing as a vacation with little kids, but this time anyway, family got us close enough.