Travel Stories by Melinda

 At age two, I joined Albert Alcosser and Lois Harmon Alcosser, my beloved parents, on my very first travel abroad, trip to St John. It was sometime in December, as the story goes my brother had just been born, about a month prior on 7 October 1965.  He stayed home in the New York apartment on 68th street in Manhattan, with our orange-haired Mary Poppins of a “nanny”, Maureen. 

We stayed at Caneel Bay Resort. I have glimpses of memory and of what I felt.  Of how my parents so enjoyed watching me experience this place. Playing in the sand at water’s edge.  Dad may have first shown me to make drip castles then. Of dipping in the water, floating in my mother’s arms playing bouncy game, getting more of my body beneath the surface.  And of wandering the green grass, walking the flowered, palmed lined pathways, in the expert exploration-style of a child.

Both of my parents had full-time careers. Dad was at that time a part of the garment industry.  A fashion manager or some such. His mother, my Nonna, immigrated from Greece as a young girl and worked at the garment district; perhaps a seamstress then, in a factory.  Nonna could embroider and sew, we still have some of her intricate lace.

Dad’s father passed, when my dad was 4-years old.  My dad was four in 1930, in Brooklyn, New York, on Georgia Avenue to be exact. The man of the house from a young age. His young sister barely born before my grandfather’s passing on. 

Travel was very important to my parents. They each traveled, a lot before they met. To Europe, dad protesting Franco in whispers in Spain, going to Cuba, Haiti and other islands the Caribbean, where he would eventually take us, on next trips. Mom visiting her uncle Henry’s Paris apartment or staying with our English relatives in London and Surry. She was a woman ahead of her time. Wanting a career before having kids, getting married or settling down.

And then, in 1961, at about 36 years of age, she told us she made a list.  A list of all the qualifications and must-have characteristics of the husband she set out to find. I imagine it that she brought that list with her to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, that fateful day when Al spotted Lois at the Red Lion Inn.  That was the beginning of the life they made together.

St John in 1965, gentle blue sky and water, polka dotted bathing suit, sun hat, two doting parents. I was off to the races! Travel became stored in my bones.

At about age five, we travelled to Haiti, …