Summer Split

Perry: You’ve enjoyed the separate, nicer place for years. Isn’t it time to give others a turn?

Chezky: The current accommodations have always worked for all of us. Why stir up the status quo now?

Chezky

There’s something so comforting and familiar about a family tradition. Like Shabbos Chanukah at my parents-in-law, and fighting over which night to celebrate my brother Yossi’s Ushpizin, and visiting Great-Aunt Yittel once a year.

And like summer vacation at my parents’ bungalow. Make that bungalows; shortly after I got married, they’d purchased a second one, right next door the ancient, sprawling one that once belonged to my grandparents.

It’s a mazel they bought the neighbors’ one too, when it went up for sale. If not for that, I don’t think Faigy would agree to keep spending our summers there.

“Honestly,” she told me once. “I don’t know how your family manages in that old place. Is there a single window that opens and closes? And the bathroom, it’s missing half the tiles, it’s literally dangerous for kids to walk around in there.”