Once Upon a Summertime

“I don’t want to go on another family summer vacation! I want to stay with my friends and party. I’m too old for this.” My great niece glared at her mother and me, convinced the world was conspiring to make her life miserable.

“You’re still in school,” her mother replied crisply. “I’m not leaving you here to throw parties without adult supervision. I know what you’re like.”

I grinned. Winking at Britt, I said slyly “Your mom and I both did stupid stuff when we were your age. We know how much trouble you can get into on your own.”

Her mother, Jasmine, nodded angrily at me, suggesting I should shut up. She was in favor of my message, but not the words I chose to deliver it. She turned back to Britt. “Besides, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for you to cruise around Europe and meet lots of different people. All your friends will be jealous of your stories when you get back, and they just spent their whole summer in Columbus.”

Turning back to me, Jasmine added, “I have to go and pick up Zak from soccer. Please don’t tell her any of your stories while I’m gone.”

We stayed silent while Jasmine picked up her keys and left the house, all three of us aware of what would happen next.

“What did you do that was so awful, Aunt Natalie?” asked Britt, hoping to gather some gossip. I knew she was trying to put together evidence that she was more dependable than me (and her mother), but to be honest, she had fewer survival skills than either of us. So I decided on one of my favorite stories from my misspent youth.

I poured myself a glass of pinot noir and sat back in my chair. “I was your age in 1969, the year your mom was born,” I started, noting with satisfaction that Britt was giving me her full attention. “Four schoolfriends and I left London and went on a horse-drawn caravan vacation in Ireland.”

“You mean like a gypsy caravan?” asked Britt, startled by the idea that they existed outside movies.

“Yes, like a much smaller version of the Conestoga wagons that the pioneers used to travel west! There were two sets of bunk beds and a bed crosswise at the back of the caravan. It was very crowded. At night, we lit gas lamps, which gave off a little heat. There was no other heating or cooling. We none of us knew much about horses, but there we were, dependent on Eileen to pull us from one town to the next. We had to feed her oats and let her loose in fields each night after we parked at a camping site.”

Looking back on it, I doubted that in this day and age, the owner would have trusted five schoolgirls to take his horse and caravan on a tour around County Cork. But no questions had ever been raised about age and adult supervision back then. And no questions from our families about us going to a (slightly) foreign country by ourselves. Of course, they didn’t know that Northern Ireland was just about to explode in violence for the next 30 years.

“So the first day, we took the instruction in how to harness the horse to the caravan, received a hand-drawn map and a supply of oats, and set off down the road. It took hours to get to the next town, because we didn’t know what we were doing, and the map was not very detailed. Rural Ireland does not follow the grid system – the roads twisted around, and at one intersection we couldn’t figure out which way to go. We all climbed out of the caravan and told the horse to move. She walked into the middle of the intersection and stopped dead. She looked at us. We looked at her. She relaxed as if to say ‘I’m in no hurry, you figure it out.’ Eventually we had to make the decision, and fortunately it turned out two hours later to have been the right one. The sun was going down as we arrived at the campsite. We were met by a couple of guys who helped us park and who knew Eileen well – they said she was the slowest of all the horses.”

Britt’s attention was starting to wander. Time to get to the meat of the topic.

“Once we’d fed ourselves, we headed off to the local pub. We were old enough to drink – this was in the days before everyone got serious about kids not drinking.”

Britt’s mouth was open. In her sheltered life, children did not drink alcohol. When I was a child, I started going into pubs at 14 years old, and no one asked for ID. At that age, they were only serving hard cider or beer to us, and no one thought that counted as “real drinking.” By her age, we had graduated to drinking spirits. Wine would come later, with sophistication.

“There was no air conditioning, so the pub was very warm. We were excited that we had survived our first day on the road, so we celebrated. I started on cider, then I switched to vodka and lime.”

Britt decided to show off her knowledge, “You mean a gimlet?”

I smiled. Times have changed. “Not really. It was a shot of vodka, a splash of lime cordial, and nothing else. No ice, no chilling, no garnish. We didn’t do cocktails in pubs back then. Vodka and lime was quite a strong drink in both flavor and alcohol content, and I didn’t have much experience drinking spirits. We got pretty loud by the time that the pub closed. It was still quite warm outside, but of course it was dark, and we were walking across fields and through trees to get back to the campsite.”

I paused here, waiting for her to absorb the fact that I was about as drunk as she would be at a party with her friends, even though they would probably only drink beer.

“Then suddenly there were voices all around me – male voices. Some guys from the pub had been watching us drinking and then followed us out. They had managed to get between us before we noticed them, so we couldn’t see or hear each other at all. Someone grabbed my wrist and started pulling me toward the trees. I struggled, and he said, ‘It’s OK, I’m a friend.’ I was pretty sure that was not true.”

Britt thought I was being foolish. “Why didn’t you yell for help?”

“Once you’re separated from your friends, and you’re in a place you don’t know, who’s going to come and help you? His friends or yours? I realized way too late that I had put myself in danger. I’d felt bulletproof because I was among friends, and it took only a couple of minutes to separate me from all forms of help. I didn’t know if they were in the same situation as me, or whether they would be able to come back and rescue me. I was struggling with this man, but he was stronger than me, and he’d wrestled me to the ground. I was expecting to get raped, worried that I might also get injured.”

Britt blinked at me. In her safe world, she would have had a phone with her to call for help, and to shine a light on her attacker. She was imagining being alone in the dark with no backup. “What happened? Were you raped?”

I smiled. “Not then, no. That came a few years later. On this occasion, one of my friends had made it back to the caravan, picked up a flashlight and came back with some other campers. They rescued the four of us who had been grabbed. I had a torn dress and some scratches and bruises, but that was all. But that was sheer luck. Even when you think you’re very safe, it only takes a minute or two for the situation to change completely.”

Britt gulped. “So you did get raped later?”

“I told you, your mom and I both made really bad decisions and did really stupid stuff when we were younger. We know it runs in the family, so we’re doing our best to protect you from making the same mistakes we did. This one wasn’t even my fault. I was with friends; I hadn’t wandered off by myself. But it could have had a very unhappy ending. Just because it’s summer and everyone is happy, it doesn’t make the world a safe place. Go with your family on the European cruise. Have fun while it’s on your parents’ dime. You won’t be able to afford it for a few years once you have to support yourself. Oh, and don’t wander off by yourself in the dark in a strange place.”