Memorial Day Weekend

When I was a kid, the Memorial Day weekend celebration culminated in the town parade. Everyone who was part of any sort of Roxbury organization marched. Following the parade, everyone converged at the cemetery where the guns were shot off to commemorate fallen soldiers and then the whole town would walk over to the Old Fire House to have a picnic of egg salad sandwiches and potato salad. Those were good times.

In more recent years, the parade has become less important to my family; maybe it’s because we stopped joining things. I dropped out of Brownie Troop 242 and once my sister graduated from high school, she was no longer on any local sports teams, so we stopped going all together.

This year my whole family trekked up to Cape Cod and hung out at the beach for the weekend. Although it’s a hike to get up there, the weekend was a lot of fun. One of my roommates came along and my sister brought her friend Fawn. We hung out and ate and went to the beach. In my mind, that’s a pretty perfect way to spend a weekend, including the family bonding time.

The most exciting part for me was Friday night when we arrived. We all had turkey sandwiches and my sister and I finally gave my mom her Mother’s day gift. For our birthdays this year, my parents gave us a bit of money towards taking a trip together. I think they were expecting us to go camping, or maybe to Florida together, but we managed to find a good deal on airfare and take a trip to Italy.

While we were there, we kept a journal, which I typed up and printed out, and my sister put all of our pictures in an album and we finally were able to tell my parents about our trip the week before. I think they appreciated it. Until it came up that my brother bought her a bike. Suck up.

Other than that, it was very laid back, and for me, it was even better than marching in a parade.