The Grobaty family at the Grand Canyon, Easter, 1999.
I’m gonna be honest with you just this one time: I almost cheated today on Easter Sunday.
A couple of decades ago, my beloved Grandma Bet told me to take my kids Ray and Hannah and my wife Jane on family vacations. “Just once or twice a year, pack them up and go someplace nice,” she said.
The four of us already went to San Clemente a couple of times each summer, but we decided to take a more elaborate excursion during Easter week each year.
They weren’t particularly exotic, and the trips were mostly within California: Monterey, San Francisco, Oxnard (it was nicer than it sounds) and one particularly ambitious week in a wobbly Taurus station wagon, to Four Corners. We never made it to that destination because we got snowed in for two days in Flagstaff, Arizona, including on Easter Sunday.
Early that Easter, I trudged through the snow (trudging is really the only way to get anywhere in the snow) to a Rite Aid a couple of blocks from our hotel. I picked up some games, some Easter candy and other snacks to help amuse Ray and Hannah and pass time in our forced isolation (of two days! Can you even imagine?)
On Monday or Tuesday—it was a while ago—we dug the Taurus out of the snow and motored for a couple of hours to the Grand Canyon. It was a fairly hazardous trip in a car that, like the rest of the family, wasn’t built for snow, and when we finally slid into our destination, it was as quiet as Long Beach is right now. Only a few scattered cars were around. Essential tourists? And we could park anywhere along the canyon’s rim and take in the vistas, more majestic than I had imagined, and made even more beautiful by the snow lining its ledges and crevices.
That trip, and the others our family took every year at Easter, will always be in my thoughts.
When my dad was dying in 1998, my sister asked him what his favorite memory was, and he told her it was our family vacation in the 1960s when we rented a motorhome and stayed in campgrounds along the California and Oregon coasts.
There were some other notable outings my wife and kids took as well, including a full-on staycation, when we did all manner of touristy stuff in Long Beach while staying at the Westin shortly after Easter in 1996. All memorable, all stuck in my head this Easter while we’re all on our own enforced staycations, to put it in the best possible light.
Get to the part where I almost cheated!
Well, while nostalgic for our family togetherness, I called Ray a couple of days ago to invite him over for Easter, so the four of us could celebrate the holiday.
I’d grill some ribeyes, Mom would throw a salad together and smash some potatoes, we’d have a cocktail in the Barn, ‘rassle with the pooches.
“That sounds nice,” said Ray.
But soon my wife and I were wracked with guilt for conspiring to break the non-contact rule for our own selfish reasons. Ray’s safe; we’re safe. Maybe more importantly: We’re not like the others.
It’s just for a couple of hours, a nice family get-together, then we’d send Ray home and go back to following the safe-at-home rules. Please, just this once. Everyone gets a mulligan.
It’s the sort of ill-conceived rationalizations that even now too many people are using to go out and do what they want to do. It’s only one person. If I get it, I’ll survive fine. I’m not going to let the virus ruin my life. IT’S EASTER, for god’s sake.
In the end, we couldn’t talk ourselves into it.
Heartbroken, I called up Ray and told him it was just a bad idea. Happily for me, he agreed. “I was sort of surprised when you invited me,” he said.
We agreed that we’d see each other once again. Maybe a Fourth of July pool party at my sister’s house.
“If it’s not over by then, I’m still gonna jump in that pool,” said Ray.
Everybody sacrifices now. Everybody hurts, and they hurt more at times on holidays when they’re used to being with one another.
Saddened, but grateful for my son’s understanding, my wife and I put the ribeyes back in the freezer for some bright summer evening when we can all be together again.
There’s still four of them, we don’t want to break up the package.
Tim Grobaty is a columnist and the Opinions Editor for the Long Beach Post. You can reach him at 562-714-2116, email [email protected], @grobaty on Twitter and Grobaty on Facebook.
Quarantine Chronicles, Day 28: There’s no cheating allowed on this lonely Easter
I’m gonna be honest with you just this one time: I almost cheated today on Easter Sunday.
A couple of decades ago, my beloved Grandma Bet told me to take my kids Ray and Hannah and my wife Jane on family vacations. “Just once or twice a year, pack them up and go someplace nice,” she said.
The four of us already went to San Clemente a couple of times each summer, but we decided to take a more elaborate excursion during Easter week each year.
They weren’t particularly exotic, and the trips were mostly within California: Monterey, San Francisco, Oxnard (it was nicer than it sounds) and one particularly ambitious week in a wobbly Taurus station wagon, to Four Corners. We never made it to that destination because we got snowed in for two days in Flagstaff, Arizona, including on Easter Sunday.
Early that Easter, I trudged through the snow (trudging is really the only way to get anywhere in the snow) to a Rite Aid a couple of blocks from our hotel. I picked up some games, some Easter candy and other snacks to help amuse Ray and Hannah and pass time in our forced isolation (of two days! Can you even imagine?)
On Monday or Tuesday—it was a while ago—we dug the Taurus out of the snow and motored for a couple of hours to the Grand Canyon. It was a fairly hazardous trip in a car that, like the rest of the family, wasn’t built for snow, and when we finally slid into our destination, it was as quiet as Long Beach is right now. Only a few scattered cars were around. Essential tourists? And we could park anywhere along the canyon’s rim and take in the vistas, more majestic than I had imagined, and made even more beautiful by the snow lining its ledges and crevices.
That trip, and the others our family took every year at Easter, will always be in my thoughts.
When my dad was dying in 1998, my sister asked him what his favorite memory was, and he told her it was our family vacation in the 1960s when we rented a motorhome and stayed in campgrounds along the California and Oregon coasts.
There were some other notable outings my wife and kids took as well, including a full-on staycation, when we did all manner of touristy stuff in Long Beach while staying at the Westin shortly after Easter in 1996. All memorable, all stuck in my head this Easter while we’re all on our own enforced staycations, to put it in the best possible light.
Get to the part where I almost cheated!
Well, while nostalgic for our family togetherness, I called Ray a couple of days ago to invite him over for Easter, so the four of us could celebrate the holiday.
I’d grill some ribeyes, Mom would throw a salad together and smash some potatoes, we’d have a cocktail in the Barn, ‘rassle with the pooches.
“That sounds nice,” said Ray.
But soon my wife and I were wracked with guilt for conspiring to break the non-contact rule for our own selfish reasons. Ray’s safe; we’re safe. Maybe more importantly: We’re not like the others.
It’s just for a couple of hours, a nice family get-together, then we’d send Ray home and go back to following the safe-at-home rules. Please, just this once. Everyone gets a mulligan.
It’s the sort of ill-conceived rationalizations that even now too many people are using to go out and do what they want to do. It’s only one person. If I get it, I’ll survive fine. I’m not going to let the virus ruin my life. IT’S EASTER, for god’s sake.
In the end, we couldn’t talk ourselves into it.
Heartbroken, I called up Ray and told him it was just a bad idea. Happily for me, he agreed. “I was sort of surprised when you invited me,” he said.
We agreed that we’d see each other once again. Maybe a Fourth of July pool party at my sister’s house.
“If it’s not over by then, I’m still gonna jump in that pool,” said Ray.
Everybody sacrifices now. Everybody hurts, and they hurt more at times on holidays when they’re used to being with one another.
Saddened, but grateful for my son’s understanding, my wife and I put the ribeyes back in the freezer for some bright summer evening when we can all be together again.
There’s still four of them, we don’t want to break up the package.
Tim Grobaty
Tim Grobaty is a columnist and the Opinions Editor for the Long Beach Post. You can reach him at 562-714-2116, email [email protected], @grobaty on Twitter and Grobaty on Facebook.
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