I remember how, as a kid, I looked forward to summer vacations.
- School was out, we were bored, and anything would have made us happy.
Going to the beach was a way to get away from the house and do something fun. I never thought about how uncomfortable it could be for my parents. We didn’t have air conditioning in the beach house we rented. At that time, I didn’t think about how that may have been because they couldn’t afford a beach house with air conditioning. I wasn’t aware of how it affected my mother’s breathing, or my dad’s heart. After five years of going to the same beach during the summer, we had to stay home. Mom and dad had things happen at the house that didn’t give them enough money to be able to afford to rent the beach house. It was just the one year, but it meant there were a lot of changes in the way the beach house. Over that year, the beach house had air conditioning installed. Actually every house on the beach now had air conditioning. I could see the thrill on mom’s face when she realized we had air conditioning, and that thrill always stayed with me. When I got older, I began to realize how the lack of air conditioning affected mom and dad. They both have lung problems and it must have been affecting them even back then. They always had air conditioning in our home, but being kids, we were very selfish and didn’t care if we had air conditioning, as long as we could get away from home.