I’d forgotten how much summer is a total assault on the senses, a visceral overload of feeling. There’s the wildfire smoke that’s been coming and going, the heavy humidity, the blazing sun, the soak of sunscreen and bug spray, the caked on sweat, the downpour of the unavoidable summer storms we’ve been caught in once or twice—the ones that keep flooding our basement. There’s the hot car seat sticking against the back of your thighs, and the blasting air conditioning that dries out your throat, and the hot steamy air that blows in when the windows are down.
There’s drippy, melty ice cream, corn between the teeth, condensation all over the outside of the glass where your ice coffee is rapidly melting. There’s bare feet getting exfoliated on the pool deck, dirty bodies after camp, mosquito bites on your knuckles, behind the calf, or on the top of your foot. There’s the gloppy Caladryl, wet bandaids, flaking scabs, and scooter scrapes. There are more baths and more hair knots and more tick checks, tan lines, and Ada’s first sunburn making a handful of freckles come out on her nose and cheeks.
As a kid, summer always ranked 4th out of the four seasons because there was a certain self-consciousness to always being out of sorts—face too red playing soccer, head too sweaty, hair all a mess, feeling ill-fitting in my clothes. I didn’t like to be hot and I didn’t like being sticky. But now as an adult it feels like a balm to all just exist in a sweaty soup, and to spend more time in this more uncomfortable and visceral space.
I had the thought over the weekend that the summers of childhood—before adolescence, before jobs, before thinking about how to spend your time “valuably” because it matters to some narrative of adult life—are so heavily romanticized because they are the most fleeting. They are the closest kids get to the version of non-helicopter-parenting freedom in 2023 and there are only ever a handful of them to look back on.
For a brief half hour after dinner last week we headed to the swim hole a few miles from our house. It’s the best time of day to go there because it’s magic hour and the sun cuts sideways through the trees, sparkling on the water. The kids wandered off to an area of the river that’d been blocked off by a fallen tree branch, like an open-ceiling beaver’s den. The water was a bit swampier and filled with algae, but it was private and sized for a child. The kids huddled in there for a while, then emerged, shouting about their new, magical, secret fort. “There’s a mushroom log and minnows and special rocks with minerals and a ladybug and it’s nice and warm,” shouted Ada. “It’s amazing!”
In the article I link below (Let the Kids Get Weird…), the author references an idea from the writer Rachel Cusk, asking, “Can an adult—however virtuosic and talented, however disciplined—ever attain a fundamental freedom from the fact of his own adulthood?” I wandered over and felt the water get grossly warm and slimy around my feet. There was, perhaps, a singular minnow. The “mushroom log” was a lone, tiny fungi growing in a hole in the fallen, dead tree. I did not find it amazing and was anxious to escape the murkiness, feeling slightly claustrophobic between the branches and the too-hot water in between my toes. But it made me think about my adult brain, needing that “freedom from adultness,” which requires letting go of both narrative and control. That to see the magical, secret fort, I had to embrace their alternate reality, the same one that awakens when you lax on the rules and stay up too late waiting for it to get dark enough for fireflies. It’s then you may notice it as they notice it, and see it for the magic it is.
Summer quick hits:
To read: Let the Kids Get Weird: The Adult Problem with Children’s Books [Lithub]. I’m a very strong proponent of the weird and the dark and the morbid for kids. This features Jon Klasson’s new book, The Skull, which is great.
Great bug spray: Wondercide peppermint tick and mosquito spray. No more citronella smell! My kids *enjoy* wearing this stuff and it’s kept them pretty bite free this summer.
To read: How Your House Makes You Miserable by Anne Helen Petersen. There’s no topic I discuss more with friends / Jacob more than aspirational real estate hunting. Cue watching other people on social media (seemingly) casually take on massive cosmetic house projects, zillow lurking, the obsession with photoshoot ready homes. This essay has so many great insights/observations about the proliferation of remodeling, dictation of taste, home-as-identity.
To watch:
The Bear, Season 2: Incredible TV. The originality of each episode and the refusal to be formulaic makes this truly standout.
Tour de France: Unchained on Netflix for the inside insanity behind the Tour de France, and the mechanics of how the race works, which also made this season’s Tour very fun to follow along-with.
The Summer I Turned Pretty, Season 2” Love Jenny Han and this adorable cast. Han is also on this ep of Podcrushed talking about middle school and the making of her shows, which is fun to hear about.
Losers: The 2019 docu-series about athletes who experienced crushing defeats, but then found some silver linings. Very fun and goes into some niche sports.
PSA for the kids: 3 new episodes of Bluey just dropped.
To make: This spicy cucumber with yogurt, lemon + herbs recipe, but i also added a lot of thinly sliced celery, and red onion. Could also sub in fennel. Refreshing, spicy, delicious.
Upstate date night at: Stissing House in Pine Plains. The bread comes with copious amounts of perfectly room temp butter. The brownie sundae is chef’s kiss. Order copiously, share everything.
Perfect cookies: The cookies and pie at The Little Rye Bakehouse, also in Kingston, only open on Sundays. The ginger molasses and the peanut butter miso are cookie ideals.
To hike: Bonticou Crag in the Mohonk Preserve with the kids for a tough but fun rock scramble, an incredible view, and lots of mushroom action en route.
To listen: Normal Gossip is my podcast of summer. The host invites a guest on to deconstruct a sticky interaction, often laced with moral/values questions. Very fun and I loved The Chair Saga with Hannah Giorgis, Vigilante Renovation with Jasmine Guillory, and Every Peach is a Miracle with Samin Nosrat.
Currently reading: The Managed Heart: The Commercialization of Human Feeling by Arlie Hochschild: A fascinating study into how much we act emotions — in our daily lives, as a role that becomes commodified, when it’s required as part of making a living. Hochschild coined the term “emotional labor,” so if that’s a hot topic in your household, then this is worth reading. (Unfortunately a $$$ book, and the library didn’t have it. The irony!)
The kids are reading:
Ada’s got quite the summer book stack. She’s blazing through the Ramona collection (Beverly Cleary), has read Vera Brosgol’s graphic novel about camp, Be Prepared, at least five times, and is caught up in the suspense of Book 2 of A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Reptile Room.
Julian’s enamored by The Element in the Room, Gods & Heroes, and any book about Minecraft.
Summer bedding: I am a convert to the summer quilt and we have this one from Brooklinen and have zero complaints.
Hope you’re all having good summers and See you next week, or when the mood strikes next :)
Great essay, thank you so much. I haven't thought about summer like that before but it deeply resonates.
This was such a nice reminder of what summer used to be when the kids were younger. I was never a summer loving person until I had kids. Hold on to it. As they get older, the magic is fleeting and that makes me sad.