“What did you do on your summer vacation?” It’s a reliable, if predictable, essay topic to assign when you want to get to know a batch of new high school kids. But in all my many years of teaching English, I never assigned it. Here’s why.
In her first week of her first year of teaching, my friend Janet did assign the topic to her classes. This was in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, in 1975, and what all her students had done over the summer was to see Jaws. Maybe a few talked about fishing on Grand Lake or going to summer camp, but most of them wrote about Jaws. Janet hadn’t seen it. Nor had I. So, the first weekend of the school year, we dutifully went.
I’ve never been able to erase the memory of those first five minutes: the heedless girl swimming in the ocean, the ominous chords, the glimpses of the some dark thing getting closer and closer, and then . . . teeth, and screaming, and blood in the water.
I’ve never been able to swim in the ocean since that day. I can wade in as far as my ankles (although I worry about my toes getting eaten). I can even float around a bit—anxiously—if the water is clear and other people are swimming nearby. But you won’t find me swimming off a beach on Cape Cod, that’s for sure.
So, for me, it’s not a problem that it’s way too cold to swim in our part of Nova Scotia, where we spend as much of our summers as we can. (The water in the Bay of Fundy is bone-chillingly cold. The tides are fast and strong. People don’t even sea-kayak on our side of Nova Scotia.) There are plenty of other things to enjoy besides swimming. Plus, for those who have to swim, there are lakes. I like inhaling the fresh sea air and looking at the forty-mile view across to New Brunswick, from the porch. I like sitting on our rocky beach at lunchtime, shaded by a big sunhat, eating a sandwich, and watching for seals. I like bicycling down the road, crossing pockets of air warmed by the sun on asphalt and then misty patches of chilly fog, with almost no traffic but lots of gorgeous views.
So, when Canada announced it was opening the border to US citizens, Michael and I let out cheers that were probably audible to our neighbors. In the first week of August, we happily jumped through bureaucratic hoops. We got PCR tests for COVID (within 72 hours of crossing the border) and printed out the results; we filled out a complicated online form (ArriveCAN) that required uploading our proofs of vaccination; we even organized a plan for quarantining if we needed to. Then, feeling like nervous wrecks, we drove up to the border between Maine and New Brunswick.
To avoid the possibility of long lines, we spent the night in Calais (pronounced like “callus”), in Maine, ten minutes from the border. That evening, as we were entering the local diner, a frail couple in their 80s was leaving. Just as we were being served apple crisp, they returned, looking exhausted and frazzled. Apparently, they hadn’t filled out the form correctly. The Canadian border guards had turned them back.
Our anxiety levels ratcheted up. We began fantasizing that we’d somehow slipped into an episode of The Handmaid’s Tale.
The elderly couple had been told that they needed to upload their proofs of vaccination. (They had their white cards. That was not enough.) Because we’d just completed our forms successfully, we volunteered to help. My favorite moment came after I’d taken photos of their vaccination cards and uploaded them. I explained that you could show your COVID test results on the cell-phone screen, without having to print them out. “Oh, that’s good,” the woman said. “See, I have it right here, and it’s positive.”
Positive?!? We were sitting at a table with people who’d just tested positive for COVID?!? Michael recoiled as though he’d just stepped on a rattlesnake. I managed to make myself examine the test results with the outward appearance of calm. The results were negative, of course. I said so, loudly, and Michael relaxed. (So did the waitress, I think.)
The next morning, we waited in line for half an hour and crossed without incident. So it turned out we weren’t stuck in The Handmaid’s Tale–more like one of those Chevy Chase Vacation flicks. And the month up north was great, as it always is.
So, my friends, what were your exciting moments from your summer vacations?
So THAT’s why you don’t swim in the ocean on Cape Cod! I saw that movie when it came out also. After the movie my friend and I were walking up Cambridge St in the dark when a huge dog jumped at us barking ferociously (from behind a fence). We both jumped and screamed. It was a high adrenaline night.
The Covid test story made me smile because patients don’t always realize that a negative test result is usually a positive thing.
We crossed the Canadian border early on August 9th, the first day we could. I was so pleased that we had to present proof of vaccinations and negative test results, along with our passports. Good for Canada! I was a little dismayed a bit over a month later, when traveling back into the US, we only had to show our passports. It made me want to turn around and head back to Vancouver Island where they seemed to be taking the pandemic more seriously.
I felt exactly the same way! And in fact, that’s what we’re doing. We’re headed back early next week — probably just for a few weeks, until the long hours of darkness get to us. It may make you feel better to know that people who arrive by airplane to the US do, in fact, have to show a negative test….
Hi Nancy! So glad to hear you were able to go to your place in Canada after all. We too (as well as Janis and her husband) crossed into BC Canada on August 9th. As you say, it was a bit complex and required some attention to detail but once we got across all was well. And as Janis implied, we felt MUCH safer than many places back in the U.S. For example, in B.C. you have to show proof of vaccination to eat in restaurants. Much safer IMHO. We are here in Kelowna BC now and will be until the end of the month before heading home. It has been wonderful to still travel even with COVID but we, like everyone, is hoping that by next summer things are far easier to navigate. And yeah, I’m not a big ocean swimmer myself but it isn’t because of the movie. I just grew up swimming in pools and can’t adjust to the sand and waves the same way! ~Kathy
Hi Nancy,
Nice to see you back in print. A few years back I taught a one-credit honors course at UMass. I think it was called “Martha’s Vineyard in the New England Imagination.” Naturally I showed JAWS to the class and guess what, it is still scary. The book does not hold up as well. It has some gratutious racist and sexist asides that have grown only more offensive in the fullness of time. Still and all, the novel gets the award for one of the best book titles of all times.
I had forgotten about that “what did you do last summer assignment” but I sure haven’t forgotten the opening scene in Jaws!
I escaped to the Rocky Mountains in New Mexico, as you know. Very few people. I also got lucky vacation wise/Covid wise in another way. I had planned a family reunion south of Springfield, Missouri a month before it became the Covid capital of the U.S.. But one of my relatives had to have emergency surgery, so we had to cancel the reunion. Strange twists of fate, life throws us.
One last thing—I saw a show about the making of the film Jaws. Spielberg was never able to go swimming in the ocean again.