I was born and raised in Vacationland. As were my parents, and their parents. Our house stands tall in the dunes overlooking seven miles of white sand and icy whitecaps. My front yard was the beach, my backyard the Ferry Beach State Park. In winter we would ice skate after school on Long Pond, a few steps away, and ski at Sugarloaf on the weekends.

When I turned 14, I went to work in the summers, as did most of my friends. We worked in pizza stands, Dairy Queens, amusement parks, water slides; we lifeguarded, waited tables, attended parking lots, or sold tickets at the racetrack. Tourism became our livelihood. An easy way to make a living, since Vacation simply arrived at our door. Because the tourists had already decided to buy whatever they were offered, there was no selling to be achieved. We merely performed the exchange, the transaction. And on our days off, we would go to the beach.

Indeed, the distinctions between the tourists and the natives don't actually define such categories as much as they render classifications elusive. The sound of Quebecois french in the street, in shops, on the pier signifies "the season." Yet that sound signifies also the language of my grandparents' house, the language of Biddeford, across the river, known at one time rather for its textile mills than its sandy coves and exclusive beaches. And that sound also signifies La Kermesse, an annual festival that celebrates Franco-American culture in our community. The festival began as a way to maintain an appreciation of the food, music, and dancing brought to Biddeford from Quebec by the textile workers who emigrated there. It remains that, but has evolved itself into a tourist attraction. The festival is now held in late June, to coincide with the French-Canadian holiday of St. Jean le Baptiste. The hope is that more Canadian tourists might take advantage of the long weekend, to play the tourist at a foreign festival which celebrates the exportation of their native culture.

When I order lobster in a restaurant, does that gesture mark me as a native, claiming my heritage as a descendant of lobstermen and fishermen? or does it mark me as a visitor, who can only participate in my native culture through the exchange value of such symbolic commodities?

On my fridge hang several postcards. It is striking, the resemblance, the extent to which they are the same: the postcards my friends send me from their vacations, and the postcards my mother sends me from home.