I promise, my mask went right back on.

We canceled our vacation proper over a month ago. We had rented a house beside Lake George, large enough to host the entirety of my family. It might have even ended up cheaper, factoring in my family of roughly fifteen people (it is hard to get a headcount these days).

COVID was the primary reason that my family's hesitation. Why spend thousands of dollars to eat takeout together because everything worth seeing was closed? But we had hope enough that my parents wouldn't have me cancel it outright.

My mother's dog Peter was growing sicker put the nail in the coffin containing our vacation. He is a Pekinese poodle, likely from inbred stock, and has seemed like a crotchety man since puppyhood. I did not hold out a great lot of hope for him. My mother at first catastrophized, as is our genetic lot, saying that she could not handle cancer. For an overnight stay and a reasonable fortune, the animal hospital diagnosed him with diabetes, a condition that dogs can have despite the lack of Coca Cola in their diets. She then perseverated on how difficult diabetes will be--though she might have meant for her and not the dog. I cautioned her against googling "survival rates for diabetic dogs," but she was way ahead of me there.

When Peter returns to his bellicose self, though with a plastic disk in his back that allows one to check his blood sugar with a phone app, her only concern is paying. Lake George was an easy sacrifice.

They are not wrong. Great Escape, a tentpole our Lake George experience, is closed indefinitely. In the shadow of that silent behemoth, smaller businesses would struggle to thrive. Lake George could not import the typical Eastern European summer workers. Why leave a country that wasn't this severely affected to the plague pit of the United States? Even Canada, the country that provides Lake George's second most tourists, is so nervous about Americans that they patrol the border to keep us from fleeing north. Why come to this lake if it might mean a two-week quarantine when one goes home if one is even allowed home?

The last time Amber and I had seen my parents, they mentioned that they might take a day trip up to Lake George. Nothing much, a boat tour and lunch before returning in time to give Peter his insulin. My mother later adds horseback riding, a notion that excites me.

I invited myself along, as they had included the habitually single Bryan in their plans.

Amber, to my mild distress, stated that she had to work both days that were options. I asserted that I would be going anyway, which was not an easy thing to say. At other points in my life, I would have sat home in sullen unity with my industrious lover, fearing their resentment if I went without them. Amber is not one for guilt trips and, while I am sure she would have liked to go, she also didn't care enough to try to get a day off.

When my mother heard that Amber would not be joining us, she put pressure on my older brother Dan to come unaccompanied. I cannot be certain that my mother have extended this invitation before.

Then she realized that she had organized a trip to Lake George with only the core Quackenbushes. Nothing could stand in her way now.

The day before we are to go, my mother messages me, asking if I want to reschedule because it will to be hot out. She is explicit that any rescheduling will involve only the core Quackenbushes and not a loved one more. She believes a ninety-degree August day is prohibitive. Bryan sweats like a pig (a species that famously cannot sweat, so let us say that he sweats in the stead of several hefty hogs) and that my older brother Dan would be miserable in the heat. As the designated Vacation Orb Holder, my job is to ask the rest of the family for their opinion. I make clear that I assume any postponement would mean that we won't go at all. They seem to agree that it is better than we sweat a little to be sure the trip does occur.

Within minutes of this decision, I receive a call from the stable. They have decided that it is too hot for horses to carry us, so they canceled my reservation. The woman to whom I speak acts as though I am going to fight her, but she knows her horses better than I ever can. If I receive a full refund, I don't see a reason to snap at her.

My family arrives to pick me up twenty minutes after I thought I would see them, forty-five minutes after they were scheduled to show up. I mark their arrival as punctual. It is best that one manages one's expectations and learns from experience.

We drive by Great Escape, its rides skeletal and faded in their disuse. We are far from the park, but still there is a desperateness to it, like a dead clown, meant to entertain but unable.

My family decides that instead of horseback riding that we will go parasailing. And by "we," I mean "the male members of my family while my mother watches for a few minutes before getting bored and visiting shops." It does not seem to be as good a return on investment, more money for a matter of minutes rather than an hour. Though, since it is not going to be my money used, I won't begrudge anyone this. I want to see more of Lake George in a small amount of time, so what could be better than taking to the sky?

This becomes a moot point. There is no parasailing available today. If we wanted to book for Thursday, they could help us, but same-day parasailing is an impossibility. Tuesday, at least this COVID year, is not the time to be in Lake George. Most restaurants, we realize in the line to board our boat cruise, are closed. Those that are not are both overburdened and not of satisfying quality. The vacation scraps we could weave together fray with our lack of preparation.

Despite the closures, there is no lack of people here. My family estimates a 70% masking compliance, though all stores are adamant that one cannot enter without one. The moment people exit, they whip their masks off as though embarrassed and irritated. A crowded tourist trap is a potent vector, one that can be made more innocuous with minor precautions. The vacationers here do not seem to care. They want a vacation from caring about COVID, something none of us can have.

I am jealous of the people who get to have Lake George this inadequate year. Not envious, as though they have something I want, but jealous. It feels that they are taking something that is mine. In a couple of days, they will see fireworks meant for my eyes. The bastards.

This is not to say that I want this year, as much as that I don't want them to have it. I can't stand that this is another thing that COVID has stolen from me. Many storefronts and attractions are either closed for the season or seemingly forever. How long will it take until Lake George is again normal? The vaccine itself might not be enough to goose the economy, not once it has started to cascade.

Though this may be for nothing. Every hotel has no vacancies. My family suggests that the hotels may be renting only every other room. Our old mainstay, Scotty's Lakeside Resort, has more people staying there than I have ever seen. It may be that people who had interstate or international vacation plans this summer canceled them and, in concession, booked rooms in Lake George.

The boat tour touches the familiar points. It is jarring to witness the adamance mask-wearing until we are seated, at which point almost all people abandon it. A worker comes by and offers to take cellphone pictures of groups, which was not a service before offered. It must have something to do with the coronavirus, but I cannot figure out what.

The tour takes an hour and I feel little of it, but it is relaxing being on the lake. Or, it is relaxing for me. My parents try to get a reservation to a lakeside restaurant between announcements of which mansions we are passing and why the Native Americans slaughtered the surrendered British soldiers. In both cases, the answer is "crossed lines." My parents do not get a reservation and, as my many readers who are buffs of pre-Revolutionary American history already know, the French were so embarrassed at this faux pas that they piled the slaughtered British soldiers in the fort and set it on fire. It is hard to know which is the worse tragedy, though the solution to both is communicating expectations well in advance.

Waiting for a table to open up, I stop by a jewelry store, looking for a souvenir to bring to Amber in penance. I hover over an octopus pendant--not something she mentioned needing, but something she might appreciate. The woman running the store ignores me, complaining on the phone that business is so poor. I cannot take the irony of this, so I leave her to her self-fulfilling prophecy.

Over a late lunch, my mother asks when the last time was that it was just the five of us in Lake George together, no partners, no kids. It had to be the 90s. Kate came around 98, Emily was there in 2001. It is strange to think that this is unlikely to happen again unless we make a practice of these trips.

Dan says that he cannot find the generation that didn't have a tragedy. My grandmother would have dealt with the Swine Flu of 1918 and World Wars. My parents faced Vietnam and the AIDS epidemic. We had the Great Recession, 9/11, now COVID and its destruction of the economy. No one gets out easy, though it is difficult not to feel piled on right now.

During lunch, my mother talks about going to a drive-through safari this week. I am not invited and do not push to change this. When I mention this to Amber in text, she is fine that we were not included because she has laundry to do.

We talk already of our Thanksgiving and the likelihood that it will be a classy buffet. We are at a loss for what we would do, but my mother orders my father to jump on placing reservations should they open.

So that our day is something more, Dan suggests a drive up Prospect Mountain, which Amber and I hiked years ago. We decide soon that we will nix that in deference to getting home sooner. I earn that view broad view of Lake George once. It would be hard not to feel I was cheating to drive up there now.

We drive near Million Dollar Beach, trying to find the house in which we would be staying if this were year without COVID and a diabetic dog. The veil between that world and this is thick. Someone else picked up our reservation. Someone else is sleeping in a bed that should have hosted Amber and me, but it could not be another way.

We are barely in the car before my mother asks that I message the owner of the house, assuring him that we want the house in 2021. I appreciate this level of hope, the assertion that we will be back in Lake George next year in earnest.

Leaving, I feel only a small sorrow that it wasn't longer because it did not feel as though this had to be. Lake George in general? Absolutely. This trip? No, this was extra. This wasn't supposed to happen at all, so a boat tour and a middling late lunch are nothing that demands extension.

I want another trip with Amber. Camping was not enough. Lake George was not enough. I don't know what would be, but I know we will have time to make it something more. A few more weeks of the summer proper before school begins again.

Soon in Xenology: School resuming, the year growing shorter, apples?

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