my sunny day on catalina island

When I was in junior high, our family went on its many family reunions to Catalina Island. We have these so often that I wonder if we can even call them family reunions anymore. However the only thing fitting about calling them “family reunions” is the chaos, petty arguments, and smothering qualities from all the women around that will occur.

I remember Catalina Island to be a place where you can only drive golf carts around and that we rented a vacation house where I slept in a room with pictures of unknown kids on the wall – creepy, in my opinion. Our family ventured out to the dock to go shopping one sunny afternoon and it somehow ended up just being gong-gong and I strolling along together. This is probably the only time I remember being alone with my grandpa. I went inside a store while he waited for me outside. I found a t-shirt with 3 dogs wearing beach clothes with “beach bums” written across the bottom and thought it was too cute to not buy. I realized I had no money on me and none of my usual allowance-investors were around. I then remembered that gong-gong always had money on him even though he rarely used it. I shyly asked if I could borrow money from him and began to explain what I wanted to purchase, why I wanted to purchase it, and would promise to pay him back, etc. but was cut off by gong-gong’s immediate action of handing me over 50 bucks. Not only was this way too much for the t-shirt but he gave it to me so willingly and generously. He would probably never ask for it back and was beaming to provide for me something that I wanted. To this day, I still wonder if he was more happy about providing for me or if I was more happy with a silly souvenir t-shirt.

I will always remember that sunny day on Catalina Island, gong-gong.

Love always, Holmine