Hammock
As a kid, my family’s summer vacations went like this: One year, we’d take a “big trip” somewhere, and the next we’d go to Cape Cod. There, we’d rent the same house in Wellfleet, one back in the woods but not too far from the center of town, a little ranch with three bedrooms and no AC and a big backyard.
The house had a hammock outside, hung up between two pine trees. It was my favorite feature, narrowly beating the electric organ in the living room. When it was too hot to be inside, when we’d gotten back from the beach late in the afternoon, I’d lay in the hammock with my headphones and my Discman.
We always spent two weeks there, which I found boring. I wanted to go back home to see my friends, to have a real summer. I remember once that my sister and I were actively complaining about it, and my dad got mad—actually mad, something that happened so rarely that it made us both stop in an instant.
Now an adult myself, I understand. Two weeks off to do nothing, whatever you want, to go somewhere. That kind of real leisure is so rare in life, something I didn’t understand when I was young, and summers stretched out endlessly, or so it seemed.
The last time we all went to the Cape together, I left early and drove back to Boston. Two weeks was too long, I thought.
This summer, C. and I put a hammock up. We don’t have two trees, so it’s on a stand in the grass—a situation we had different plans for (expanding the patio, putting down gravel) but, instead, said fuck it.
I hadn’t thought of the hammock at the Cape or the little house until I was in our hammock in our yard. It was so nice to lay in it for a while, to have nothing to do. I wished I had more time.