Once More to Pine Hollow

          The end game was me sitting on a dark porch listening to static on a faraway radio station and staring at the dock lights on the other side of the lake. This was Pine Hollow -- now a discarded hulk, not unlike the frosted ice tea glasses you got for a wedding gift and never opened. It all began in 2005 when the tail did not wag the dog -- it possessed the poor animal: Peg and Jenna were buying new bathing suits and I suddenly found myself in a Sea Doo dealership being told by my family "we'll use it a lot." That led to paying twice as much as we wanted on a vacation house because it was closer to boat ramp. At first it was pure glee. If Martin Luther King could have imagined it, this, not children of all color playng together, would have been his dream. Evan, 16, Chad, 13, and Jenna 10, were perfect ages. Our friends came and they brought boats; there were long hot days tubing, skiiing, and wakeboarding, fueled with beer and barbeque and late night bonfires. The grass was brown and so was our skin. But by the middle of the second summer Evan began to spend 18 hours a day with his head pressed on the living room floor in sleep. The rest of the time he sulked around demanding to go home. Chad and Jenna, so enthused with the place at first, now boldly stated their feelings: "Do we have to go there every weekend? We're sick of Pine Hollow." Peg was busy wondering why we didn't spend 5 times more and get a place at a resort. So as I began to wake up alone more and more in Pine Hollow, I began to think of renting it. I announced this to the family and they were relieved they would not have to hear me beg them to go ever again. That was 2007. Grudgingly, now Chad and Jenna have recently said they miss Pine Hollow. I've told them to do what I do: Sit on the porch at home, listen to a battered radio, and imagine the school parking lot lights in the distance to be the dock lights at Pine Hollow.