Summer Freedom

We’re a month into summer vacation, and my kids’ carefree meter seems to inch higher every day.

After so many months of rising early and trudging downstairs to the breakfast table with sleepy faces and tousled hair, spending days in the routine of school and homework and practice, rushing through the final weeks of the year with recitals and games and spelling tests, they arrived at the freedom of summer.

Remember that feeling? The anticipation of an endless stretch of days filled with sleeping in, reading whatever you wanted to (or nothing at all), pedaling your bike around town with friends, long hot days at the beach or the river. Ah, summer.

The transition from school year to summer was easy peasy for the kids. It’s been a bit harder for me to adjust, but I’m getting there. On the first day of summer vacation, my children’s alarm clocks were turned off, while mine was still set for early morning. As they wondered what to do with their first day of nothing to do, I tried to figure out how to make a meeting inconveniently scheduled for that first day of no school. I’m a planner by nature and tend to get myself worked up about the growing to-do list, but gradually I’ve eased into a summer routine that allows work and play to exist together somewhat cohesively.

In an effort to keep the moans of “Mom, I’m booooored!” at bay (although I think maybe that comes when they’re a little bit older), and to maintain at least some of my sanity – and a few hours of work time each week – I have tried to find that happy mix of scheduling things to do and scheduling nothing at all. It seems my kids (and I) are happiest with a little bit of both.

So, they have summer lessons in tennis and swimming and golf, but we also leave plenty of time for impromptu soccer games in the backyard, bike rides through the neighborhood, and running through the sprinkler. We make plans some days to meet friends for a hike or an afternoon at the beach, but leave other days open for whatever happens – hanging at the pool, splashing in the river, or holing up at home with art supplies and a stack of books.

My children have had plenty of time in the first weeks of summer to invent games together, examine flowers and caterpillars and butterflies discovered in our wanderings, catch salamanders and crayfish. They’ve also had ample opportunity to get on each other’s nerves, which is a quintessential part of childhood summers for anyone with siblings. During the inevitable bouts of bickering, I remind my kids that our yard is large and send them outside to stay away from each other until they’re ready to be nice again.

With so much daylight and so much freedom, the children seem to lose track of time. And, really, isn’t that one of the great joys of summertime? To forget what day it is and not care what time it is? To eat when you’re hungry instead of when the lunch bell rings? To wonder at the end of the day how it got so late and what you did all day?

With no rush to get out the door to school, breakfast has become drawn out and leisurely. Occasionally, ice cream is eaten in place of lunch. The grill is often the cooker of choice for dinner, with the kitchen too hot for the oven and cooking outside just plain simpler. We add fresh greens from the garden to our plates and snack on peas straight from the pod, waiting for the coming-soon bounty of carrots and beans, zukes and cukes and sun-warmed tomatoes.

Bedtime, usually strictly kept, has pretty much gone out the window during these evenings where daylight lingers into slow twilight over the mountains. We’ve basked in the smoky ambiance around the fire pit with friends and cousins and grandparents, as the children beg for just one more s'more. We’ve stayed up to watch Fourth of July fireworks. We’ve snuggled together while thunder crashed and rumbled overhead and lightening shot from the dark sky in nature’s own fireworks display. In the late darkness of hazy summer nights, we have crept onto the porch to watch fireflies blink through the field like so many mystical faeries.

I often start our summer days asking the kids, “What do you want to do today,” and sometimes we just figure it out as we go along, letting summer’s warm wind blow us where it will, changing course as we need to or want to. Summer freedom doesn’t last forever, after all; we’re embracing it while we can.

Original content by Meghan McCarthyMcPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the July 11, 2014 edition of the Littleton Record.