THE ONE MORE TIME KID --- ON LEAVING THE ADIRONDACK MOUNTAINS AS A YOUNG GIRL

On the last day of a 2-week vacation every year in the Adirondack Mountains, a Sunday, we had to clean like crazy for the people coming in.  It was an old family camp and each part of the family had two weeks there.
 

My ritual as a young girl after cleaning was to go down the stairs to the lake and dive in and stay as long as I could with my mother constantly hollering down to me that I should get out and get dry or I’d "catch cold with my hair all wet" while we were driving home.  But, I never got out of the lake early. I’d just dive 'one more time, one more time,' until I would finally have to get out, clamber up the hill behind the camp and get in the back seat of our car.  Then, it was up and down the hills of the driveway, turn left onto the main road, through the small town of Eagle Bay, NY with me crying all the way.  The family story was that I would cry straight to Old Forge, a nine mile trip from Eagle Bay according to the road sign, then I’d stop.

That was until the year after I had stopped crying on entering Old Forge, that there, just outside the town, stood a beautiful deer to the side of the road.  The glorious animal got me started crying again.  I don’t know how long it lasted.

Mary Pat Kane