Bookending a Summer (Holiday Essay Sample)

It is funny how summer can fly by we wait in anticipation for it to come only for it to pass by like an airplane over our house.  When I was a kid, I would spend two weeks with my cousins at opposite ends of summer all centered around vacations up north. Growing up as a kid I had one sister my twin sister Emily and I also spent a lot of time with my cousins.  They were my mother’s older brother's kids, and they are my only cousins because my other uncles do not have kids and I do not think they plan to. 

My cousins are named Bo, Brett, and Klarissa and they grew up where my mom grew up when she was a kid in Goodhue Minnesota a small farming community southeast of Red Wing with a population of slightly over 1,000 people. My cousins are all older than my sister and me, and they all are different ages the only thing they share in common is their blonde hair. 

When school would let out in early June my parents would go to a cabin up on Gull Lake in Brainerd Minnesota. Emily and I would go stay with our Grandma and Grandpa Dankers in Goodhue while they were at the lake. Then towards the end of Summer, my cousins would come up north with us to Gull Lake in August right before school would start back up again after Labor Day. 

Bo is the oldest he is seven years older than I am, and even though he is farthest from me in age by seven years which did create a little bit of an age gap, but he is probably the one I am closet to as far as personality, we both take after our grandfather where we do not need a lot, but we appreciate what we got. I pretty much get along with him on everything except he roots for the Packers and I am a Vikings fan, but I still love him outside of two Sundays in the fall. Then there’s Brett who is 5 years older than me, so we are getting a little bit closer in age. He has an irreverent sense of humor and he likes to pull the practical joke every now, he loves when I refer to an inappropriate TV show or movie.  He also loves putting the pedal to the medal and never looking back. Then there’s Klarissa who is the youngest of the bunch and is only 4 years older than me and she like me loves to laugh and neither of us ever stops smiling. I always love to make her crack up and I enjoy doing singalongs with her. I know she means a lot to Emily being the only girl amongst us crazy boys and she is the closest thing Emily has to a sister and they can have bonding experiences together. Now that we have talked about who they are as people let us talk about the memories that make them special. 

Let us start with the beginning of summer which I was usually I was stoked for like any young kid would be, but I was especially excited because it always felt like Stewartville schools would let us out on June 9th or something like that, so the wait was finally over. Then my parents would start to get ready for up north and get us ready to go to the farm in Goodhue. We would go up there on a Saturday and stay until the following Saturday.

Usually, when we got to Goodhue it was good timing because the town was doing their big summer festival called Volksfest and I still to this day do not know what Volks mean. They usually would have a musical performance with a headlining act when we got there on Saturday and they also had carnival rides and a parade we would have to watch even though I hate traffic but free candy being thrown at me, so I am conflicted. Then after the fireworks display after it got dark which all of us kids would watch from Grandma’s house because they had a cool view of the town with the farm being on a hill overlooking the town. 

Even though all those things are great my favorite part of the week was the middle of the week when Grandma and Grandpa Dankers would go to work and they would leave us kids to our own devices and the cousins would look after us and we would have so much fun whether it was running through the sprinklers on a hot day and feeling the sharp grass on your feel the cold water hit your skin. Sometimes we would fill up a bunch of water balloons and start a huge fight and then we would all pelt our uncle Roger when he would show up to do chores. 

Although my favorite memories were when we would get on ATVs or golf carts and either play tag on them by trying to catch the other vehicle and touch them going full speed or we would treat them like bumper cars at Valley fair really smart for elementary and middle school-aged kids to be doing at the time. There was also a time when Klarissa and I were doing burnouts in the gravel on the golf cart, and she suddenly stopped, and I ate a face full of gravel and I was okay, and we still laugh about it today. It made up for the fact that I really wanted to be at the lake like my parents. It was the perfect time to do it because smartphones were not everywhere, and social media was not around, and your memories were just that memories. It was a big part of my summer and it was just as much fun when they would come up to the cabin at Gull Lake with us and we would go fishing, swimming, and tubing. This was a similar week setup as the week in June we would stop in Goodhue and pick them up and we would go to the cabin. To this day I do not understand how we got 7 of us into one cabin let alone the boat we had at the time.  

I and Bo would share a room as Klarissa and Emily and my parents would take the master bedroom, then Brett would take the coach. I just remember Bo Trying to fart on me while I was sleeping. We would get up and get out on the water, with 7 people in the tiny boat we had we kids would also end up crossing our lines then we would have to untangle. One of the funniest times though was the night we boys caught a few Catfish and it freaked Emily and Klarissa out they were terrorized. The interesting thing is that Gull Lake is not known for Catfish I do not think I have seen one since, but that was the least of the fun.

As much as I love fishing on the lake my favorite part of the week In August was swimming and tubing with them. The swim area at our resort used to be great because they used to keep the weeds out and they used to have a diving board we would try to wrestle each other off and have fun. The funniest thing was tubing behind the boat where my dad would drive as fast as he possibly could so that us kids would fall off the tube it is not always the best when you are the one getting dumped in the drink, but it is fun when you are watching someone else. It is exhilarating to get hit by the waves. 

I wish I could live one day from one of those weeks again because they were so much fun and when my cousins eventually got into their high school years the less, we saw them during both weeks. I realize that they had to get their own lives and friends and jobs, plus I and Emily became more dependent, so we could take care of ourselves.  They have not been up north with us in 6 years and that was the last time we stayed In Goodhue. A few years later Emily and I would ironically start going up in June to Gull Lake and that is what we have been doing ever since. 

I thought this would be good to talk about since Klarissa now age 24 just got engaged to her long-term boyfriend Tyler, meaning now all my cousins are either engaged or married with Brett’s wedding scheduled for July, and Bo got married in fall 2019. Thanks for putting Emily and me on the clock guys if you are reading this guy. We are also coming up on the first anniversary since Grandma Dankers passed away and both grandparents are gone now we have been cleaning out the house since and it has brought back tons of memories. With all that being said now felt like the time to tell this story though as long as we have each other the book will never end.