We are leaving now.

My Parents took a month-long vacation each summer. Who takes off four consecutive weeks from work these days? My Mom and her medical partner made an arrangement for the annual holiday when they started working together. Extended vacations were more common where my Dad worked because things at the lab moved slowly in the summer.

I can't imagine being away from home for a month; after all, I start to anticipate the return almost as soon as I reach a destination. I don't recall whether my Parents paid bills in advance or what steps they took to secure the house. I do remember how Dad and I picked up the pile of mail that the Post Office had held during the interval. Oh: our dog, Gigi, spent the month with the woman who had given her to us.

We often stayed in places that had no phone service, so if something had happened back home, we were be difficult to reach. There were no televisions, and many of our (mountainous) destinations had spotty radio reception. As a result, we infrequently caught the news. We were in the Badlands, for example, when Dad saw a headline about the Richard Speck murders. I was glad we weren't in Chicago because I reasoned that if Speck hadn't been caught, then I would be hiding under my bed. We were in Austria in 1971 when we saw a German-language edition of TIME Magazine announcing "Satchmo is Dead."

My Best Friend and my paternal Grandmother, Tatjana, sent letters to me. I anxiously checked the mail at our lodgings each day. By the time the vacation ended, I was ready to go home.

Cape Cod, Massachusetts, July 1963. The best part of a vacation is its end.