Goodbye Summer, It’s Been Nice

– Posted in: Chronic Pain, Family, Parenting, Personal Insanity, School, Vacation

We celebrated our last official day of summer vacation today with some classic Americana: swimming, barbecuing, and getting together with friends. Norman Rockwell would’ve been proud. Granted, he probably would’ve been a little disappointed by the hoards of kids lying around en masse, playing games on iPhones. Or our family wasting its final summer evening outside and instead catching up on episodes of “So You Think You Can Dance.” But then, who knows. Norman was cool. He probably would’ve just shrugged and drawn it.

Summer sped by this year. That saying, “With kids, the days are long and the years are short,” definitely applied to the last three months. I don’t know what my mother did when we were kids (shoved us out the door and told us to come back by nightfall), but with this generation of mothers, there’s so much pressure to “expose” your kids to things. Make sure they don’t “miss out” on an experience. It can drive you batty.
Yes, batty. Batty enough that when your friend calls you up last minute (on an evening when you’re feeling like complete crap and have barely made it through the day) to see if you and the kids want to go and see thousands of bats take off from under a bridge at dusk, you have to stop and think about it. Even though you feel like crap and don’t want to go. Because you’ve been putting it off all summer. This is it. So what’ll it be? Skip the experience and relax? Or buck up and see bats?
Yeah. The bats were impressive. The kids saw their friends. My son got hit in the head with a rock. They both got wet from climbing into the river. And I. . . well, I survived. 
Because so much of this summer has just been surviving for me. Just managing to drag the kids to a minimum amount of stuff so that I won’t feel like a complete failure. Just figuring out how to feed them food that isn’t always grilled cheese, quesadillas, and In ‘N Out Burger. And just getting them to take a bath once in a while.
Because I’ve had a rough summer. I haven’t felt very well. My fibromyalgia symptoms have been all over the map, and I think the trigeminal neuralgia signed another long-term lease. It’s landlord hell. 

But still, summer is one of those things that I never want to end and can’t wait to finish. I know I’ll miss having the kids around, but I want my house back. I know there will be more stuff to keep the kids occupied, but I hate having to “be” so many places. And I know I’ll get more done when there’s more structure in the schedule, but damn I hate getting up early.

So tonight, I say a bittersweet goodbye to summer. I do love you so. I love moments like these that have hopefully been burned in my brain.

And these, that I wish I could bottle up and open when it’s winter and the sun goes down at 4 p.m.

But I’m happy. Tomorrow, my house will be mine. I will go out to lunch with a friend. I will drive in the car and listen to NPR. I will vacuum without people saying, “It’s too loud.” I will walk 10 feet without someone asking me to get them something. I will sit for 30 seconds without having someone need to show me something.
And I will probably cry just a little bit. Because it went so fast.

4 Comments… add one

diane rene August 23, 2011, 4:52 pm

we have one more week of summer and I am so sad to see it go.

I'm always anxious over the realization that I can no longer sleep until 9am, or that I will need to stay awake long enough to make sure the kids are in bed and their DSi's are not, but I actually enjoyed my summer with them.

of course, that is at this moment … while one is downstairs reading a book and the other is in her room watching the Disney channel … an hour from now I may be calling the school office asking if they need volunteer helpers in the form of a 7 and 11 year old ;0)

Melissa August 23, 2011, 9:11 pm

So true. I remember a LOT of entertaining ourselves as kids. There's so much more expected now. Is it bad that I resist a lot of that organised stuff? Clubs, organised sport, dance etc? I have two ASD kids and I just think it's all a bit much for them. And honestly, I don't know how you do it. My FM and neuraglia are so severe at the moment, that I'm happy if the kids are getting toasted cheese or soup or something at dinner time. Anything else is a bonus. SO you do amazingly well, to me.

The bats though. That would have been a big "Hell no" or 'Ask their father" from me. Ugh. Bats. God, I'm such a girl.
My recent post Do you think this is too much?

PartlySunny August 24, 2011, 6:25 am

I get really anxious about any kind of change. Especially if it involves getting somewhere. So mommy has been a little snappy the last couple of mornings.

PartlySunny August 24, 2011, 6:27 am

The bats were SO freaky. We walked under the bridge before they came out and it smelled terrible. I was completely squeebed out and thought one was going to fly out and land on my head. But I had to act all cool like it was no big deal so that the kids wouldn't get all paranoid. I should've been an actress.

And dad? Working.

Sorry you're feeling so bad, btw. You know I know. . .

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