We are nine months into the school year and my children have finally decided they can make it out the door on time with relative peace. A major motivating factor is that Jacob and I started letting them scoot to school, and by leaving early—or mostly just on time—when they run into their friends en route they have time to gab about Taylor Swift or Pokemon, depending on which kid we’re talking about. I clamor behind them the rest of the way to school, say goodbye and yell “love you!” through the fence, which they only notice or respond to half the time because they’re too busy chatting on their way in.
It is a truly blissful state that feels very ephemeral, very fleeting, like we finally kind of figured it out. They’re close with their teachers, know their classmates inside and out and are surrounded by familiarity everywhere. We’ve met the classroom friends they want to have playdates with and gotten through the awkward parent hang part, so drop-offs feels less like smalltalk and more like saying hi to a community. Furthermore, every sickness that coursed through their body all winter long (COVID, the flu, scarlet fever, and strep!) has finally dissipated with the blooming of the azaleas. We survived the holidays and all the school breaks. We made it through most of a year of coordinating after school activities and sitters and pickups.
When I occasionally pick the kids up at school, Ada is almost always hanging like a monkey off one of her teacher’s arms—somewhere between a hug and a loving grip of death—and he has a heroic level of patience to endure this. Julian is usually running around with friends on the track outside the school, blissfully unaware that I’ve come to get him. I get to watch him in his element, playing with the kids who make up the more substantial friendships he’s ever really had, since he we were deep in COVID when he was two until four.
May-til-June is the month-ish long period of culminations, performances and field trips, where it feels like we can finally see everything the kids have been working towards all year. Julian’s class has been taking weekly field trips to the community garden and he has been spewing new facts about moss and bulbs. He’s brought home a basil plant, a pansy, and something he calls “my ecosystem” (there are definitely things growing in it), and is dedicated to all of their moisture levels.
Ada’s class is doing a bird study at Greenwood Cemetery this week, and she was excited to bring her binoculars and bird identification guide to school, keen to find a Monk Parakeet. This weekend she’ll sing in a school concert, and though she finds this boring and that we are making her do it deeply unfair, I hope to impress on her at least a glimpse of the experience of working towards something together as a group.
That school ends in five short weeks, when we have such rhythm, the kids are thriving, the resistance has somewhat melted, and the friendships have been forged seems kind of… unfair? The summers of movies and books always seems so full of leisure, glorified boredom, meandering dog walks, lemonade stands, and skinned knees, and perhaps to kids it does still feel that way, that the release from routine is a great liberation. Ada had writing homework to do with the prompt, “What will you do this summer?” Her half-hearted let-me-show-my-mom-how-much-I-hate-homework answer below started with the outrageous assertion that the primary experience would be boredom. (LOL).
Like many other parents, I have been figuring out the hellish logistics of summer since January, in part out of some fear of my kids having too much boredom. (Also, as all working parents know, we just need our kids to go somewhere during the day). There’s the two kids, lots of camp options which all run different weeks of the summer and for different hours of the day and for different ages, the un-pin-downable plans of extended family who want you to join them on the lake for a week, people visiting, childcare, not to mention our full-time jobs. Summer is glorious in all its own ways—the late evening light, farmers’ market abundance, bonfires and s’mores, fireflies, swim holes and dripping popsicles—but it’s also, often by design, different every week.
Our kids will do a week or two with grandparents, three weeks at one camp, then four separate weeks at three other camps. There are a few weeks that linger in the air that we’ll play by ear. We’ve voted against any major travel in favor of “keeping it simple” this summer but nothing about it feels simple, particularly my anticipation for the emotional rollercoaster created by the utter lack of consistency and the knowledge it’ll require dozens of transitions.
Ada’s class just got a bunch of eggs that are being incubated to hatch into chicks though she knows that they may not all actually hatch. “In the past sometimes they got twelve chicks but sometimes they got none,” she reports, noting that it will take up to 21 days for them to emerge. I ask her if she’s worried, because maybe I am worried, if it will be sad or disappointing if the chicks don’t hatch after all that anticipation, after doing the bird study, after the planning and hope. But she says instead, “well it wouldn’t be our fault. It just is what it is.” So this is the attitude I’m trying to take, that how the summer goes isn’t an indictment on what I put into it into advance, that the kids may even take glory in the boredom, that even though the end of school is a set of culminations, it’s also a building of things that will continue long after the summer into the next year.
Recommendations:
To read: The Lies Mothers Tell Themselves and Their Children in today’s NYT Opinion section by Elise Loehnen. Loved her take on the very conflicting roles and identities occupied within motherhood.
To see: Jacob has a new short film, Then Comes the Body, about Leap of Dance, a ballet school on the outskirts of Lagos, Nigeria, and it’s playing at Tribeca Film Festival. Screenings are sold-out, but you can see the preview and writeup on Colossal.
To eat: the cold brew at Poppy’s with a rhubarb scone on one of these glorious spring days
To watch: The Judy Blume doc, Judy Blume Forever, is somewhat formulaic in structure but she is also inspiring and effervescent. I read all the Fudge books with Ada and am excited to get into her slightly older-kid books too.
To listen: Julia Louis Dreyfus speaks with writer Isabel Allende on her podcast Wiser Than Me, who is all the kinds of content and self-assured one hopes to be in later age.
To support: Our neighborhood has a new bookstore opening and I’m super psyched. The Lofty Pigeon is raising funds on Kickstarter. Support this new local biz.
To watch: The John Mulaney comedy special, Baby J, is how a comedian comes back from total meltdown. Very enjoyable, even if I have very mixed feelings about Mulaney.
Kids’ Swimsuits: I’m loving the quality of material and the cute patterns on Seaesta Surf swimsuits. They feel like you can wear them a thousand times without wearing out.
See you next week—or the week after. :)
Ada is very wise - “it is what it is”
"my anticipation for the emotional rollercoaster created by the utter lack of consistency and the knowledge it’ll require dozens of transitions." <--I feel this so much! Going back and forth between Girl Scout camp, family trip to the beach, Jewish camp, back to GS camp...and the questions, "Will my friends be there this week?" etc. The second she makes a friend/gets used to something it's time for a new camp.