Closing Up This Seasonal Shop

We "closed up camp" too...pop-up camper style. All the pantry items like this, this, this, this, this, this, & this too (all of the foods which needed to be heated to be eaten), went back into the pantry (Really, we ate like royalty while we were away & at a camping stove! 😂😏😄😉 You don't agree? 😊😂), though I'm quite sure Mom would've had us finishing up the majority of those boxes, cans, & containers that had been opened while we wrapped up our final days of camping in August, or when we got back, the food would be the first to be eaten at our leftovers meals. That, or Mom would ask Dad, "Do you want to just take X item for your lunch tomorrow?"

He'd reply, "Uh huh." Nodding his head in agreement. (His only reasoning for disagreeing would be his knowing in advance that there'd be lunch available at work due to a "work meeting". Then he & Mom would figure on the next-best-day for him to have the leftovers for lunch.) We never camped once the school year began & we've not been camping together since us kids graduated. Neither of our parents have ever been much into wastefulness. These are some of the times when Dad's lunches got labeled "gourmet lunches". Our lunches, during the summertime, as well as during the school year, always amounted to crackers, sandwiches, or what might be served on the school cafeteria's lunch line. Custard cups full of meal "remnants" was to be only something we could drool over in waiting on our adulthoods to arrive.

Sometimes Mom wouldn't want certain boxes, cans, & containers waiting around until the next year (especially depending on how long they'd been lingering around our shelves already, expiration dates & all) &, for whatever reason, these same items weren't taken to the church's food bank for the less fortunate, & we'd eat a final few "camp meals", sometimes at "camp meal time": after 9 p.m., before our household went into full prepping-for-the-new-school-year-mode. Everything was organized & scheduled in our household, sometimes it got to be too rigid.

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All of the linens were stowed together. Dad had installed one of these in the ceiling corner of the powder room he'd designed on our main floor, right behind our kitchen. Ours was white, which worked well with the color scheme of this tiny powder room; it basically blended right on in. The cabinet hung conveniently out of the way in an alcove of a sort in this ceiling crevasse directly above the toilet, yet way up, high over our heads. It fit just snug as if designed for such a spot, with no remaining inches on the left or right hand side. In order for us to access it, we needed to get the step stool; the latch was at the top was out of reach even for the tallest of us: Dad.

Getting our items back inside the house sometimes proved frustrating, emotional, & well, family. Sometimes the kid's roles were ridiculous & it would've been nice if Mom had taken a moment to break & take at least one of those "runs" rather than dictate & delegate as was her personality norm. Though that was the way it was.

A glory time was when it was just the bare bones camper & on its final "airing out" of the season. When the slide out beds were "out", yet not fully in place. If Mom took a break from unpacking the camper & headed inside sometimes it could be pretty fun to just dwell & relax on the bed's mattress. Just to stretch out & contemplate everything &, at the same time, nothing at all.

I always thought it would be nifty to camp out at the house & sort of made believe that's what I was doing when I was able. These times of me just chilling on my back, lower legs just dangling along the edge where our handmade shoe bags hung while the camper sat parked at a site (they'd be flipped up underneath the single-layered mattress while we traveled, & removed for washing & then storage inside the house [keeping them away from roaches that would nibble at their fabric] until the start of our next camping season), were such times of my daydreams. Simple living. That's certainly what I've turned life into. Only what's necessary is what's now. I'm still a bit of a glutton, though having just that which I really, truly need is what makes me smile the most. 😁

At some point Mom would call to me (she couldn't text me as no one in our family, or neighborhood had mobile phones yet; these were, by far, not current times) (and the mobile phone she would have called on would have been large & clumsy, & costly too) & I'd (well, very) reluctantly drag myself back on into the house. She'd likely have prepared the family dinner & we'd need to be getting ourselves to the dining room table, or else when she'd call to us it was because she'd have our next "assignment" lined up & it was time that we needed to get moving on that task instead of wondering about what could've been, though wasn't.

It was time to return to the normalcy of living underneath the house's roof & within the walls of the brick & siding of our two-story house. After all, the school year would be beginning all too soon.

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