The River and the Racoon
Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in.
Robert Frost
The day after Daughter #1 graduated from high school, we mounted an expedition to Disneyworld in Florida. Taking 10 people across the country took serious long range planning. It began at Christmas with a mysterious box almost three feet tall which came in the mail from my sister. When we opened it Christmas morning, it was filled with pigs, big ones (including a bright pink one more than a foot long), mid-sized, and little ones–all sporting a slot in each piggy’s back for pennies and dimes. My sister’s husband was doing a residency in oral surgery in Jacksonville. The piggy banks were an incentive for my kids to start saving their pennies so we could visit her family. Disney World would be an added bonus!
The kids were wildly on board. I told them that each of them had to earn enough money for pay for their own pass to the Magic Kingdom. Every kid chose a plump little piggy bank to fill over the next several months. We put one of the piano for everybody’s random change, one on the dryer for the coins that fell out of people’s pockets in the wash. There were pigs in a dozen shapes and sizes in every corner of the house. I’d hear the rattle of little pigs almost every night as one child or another measured how much money they’d earned that day.
For the teenagers, cash was easier to come by. A couple of them had steady jobs, and the others already worked for neighbors babysitting or doing yard work. But for the younger ones, “big bucks” was an unfamiliar challenge. The two or three youngest (ages 8, 6, and 4) decided to make and sell Kool Aid popsicles. They did a bit of experimenting which involved an astonishing amount of taste testing, and they discovered that doubling the sugar content in the recipe on the back of the Kool Aid package make a fairly addictive product.
It wasn’t long before teams of neighborhood kids began showing up with dimes and quarters to buy popsicles. Business was so brisk, we had to put a sign on the front door announcing sales hours—otherwise, the doorbell rang before we were awake or long after we went to bed. My older children started buying popsicles from their younger siblings out of their vacation earnings–a bit self-defeating on their part, but great for the younger kids’ piggy banks. In the end, even the four year-old saved more than $100.00 for his own ticket. (He’s been really good at math ever since!)
In June, the family across the street offered to trade us our Volkswagen bus for their 15 passenger van for our two-week trip, and we were off on our great adventure. We took the southern route, driving through Texas then along the coast of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and into the panhandle of Florida. Early on, we agreed that whoever was driving had control of the music. When the two teenagers were at the wheel (yep, we let them drive occasionally—1500 miles is a l-o-n-g way), the CD player belted out Depeche Mode, They Might be Giants, and a ½ dozen other groups popular at the time. (I can still sing all the words!)
Our two or three days at Walt Disney World with my sister’s family was memorable, filled with rides and food and wonder. But it’s odd that today when we tell the stories of that trip, almost no one mentions the Magic Kingdom. Two things stand out: a river and racoons.
My sister’s house had a huge tree whose top branches leaned over the roof of her house. In the tree lived a family of racoons. Late at night they’d crawl out of their nest in the hollow of the tree onto the roof and peer into windows mounted in the intersection of her clearstory roof (one section of the roof is higher than the other with windows to bridge the gap). Those little yellow beady eyes were as fascinated with our children as the children were with them. Son #1, then 16, took a pledge to capture one of the critters.
Knowing their penchant for “shiny things”, he took an old wooden milk box, tilted it up on one end with a stick as a prop, and balled up a length of aluminum foil which he placed at the back of the box as bait. One night, then two, then three—nothing. But the fourth night we heard screeching and cursing from the back yard. All four adults and 14 children (my eight and my sister’s six) trooped out to the backyard to check the trap.
None of us will ever forget the sight of Son #1, well over six feet tall, leaping at least his own full height into the air in jubilation when he saw the beady eyes peeking between the wooden slats of his trap. He circled the box several times dancing as he went, then headed back in the house to dig out a camera so he could document his success to his friends. When he finally lifted the edge of the box with a broom handle, a very large, very angry racoon, came storming out. The creature headed straight for the old tree, scolding under his breath as he went, and climbed up the trunk to his burrow without a backward glance.
The other memory was of a river called Ichetucknee. My sister had recommended that we visit this nearby state park and rent inflated tubes for $2 apiece to float the river. About six miles long, the river eventually pours in the Atlantic. At its deepest, it’s only six feet or so–the water so crystal clear we could count the stones on the bottom as we passed.
I had been a little alarmed when during the information speech before our trip began, a ranger assured us that every morning before the first group of tourists set off, a team of his buddies went down the river removing any large alligators from in or nearby the water. (Apparently, they ignored the little ones.) My kids were thrilled! A river trip with the possibility of being eaten by an alligator. Take that Disney World!!
Our three-hour voyage kept even the four year-old mesmerized. A tree canopy overhead held thousands of birds in dozens of species, all greeting us with spectacular colors and musical calls. Topical fish swan between our toes, and jungle blossoms covered the ground around every corner. Son # 5, about eight at time, was so enamored of our mellow float through the costal jungle, he refused to get out of the water at the dock. He just kept paddling along as his siblings’ screams followed him warning that he was headed for the ocean and sharks. (After alligators, sharks weren’t much of a deterrent.) Scrambling along behind him, it was a half mile before I managed to grab the edge of his tube and pull him back with me. Now at age forty, he still relishes telling the tale.
Today my children are all adults. When they regale their own children with their adventures on that trip, Disney World is seldom even a faint afterthought. It’s the river and the racoon that are imprinted on their hearts. Shared adventure is part of the glue that binds families together. And it often doesn’t cost a dime.