Going Back

Today is the very last day of my son’s summer vacation.  On Monday he goes back to school.  Here at home, my life goes back to normal.

In fact, it will take me a week to get things back to normal.  At the top of my “to-do” list is clean the house:  wash down walls, vacuum along the baseboards, dust light fixtures, scrub the grout in the shower, de-grease the hood over the stove.  I’ve actually deliberately been accumulating dirt and mess so that my thorough housecleaning will be even more satisfactory.  For example, somebody left chocolate pudding fingerprints on the bathroom wall this week.  I haven’t washed them off yet.  I’ll do it next week, when everything gets put to rights.

I’ve also begun revolving in my head my next writing project.  All my ideas seem so brilliant, so inspired.  It will take me several days of reviewing old notes and brainstorming through some new ideas to settle down to something.  It will be another week at least before I really get to work.  It will take my son a few weeks to settle back into his routine, too. 

Like the school building that stood empty in June and July, my “normal” life has stood, uninhabited these last months, waiting for me to move back in.  I’m ready to go back.

Summer Spent

There is one week left of summer vacation.  We have accomplished everything on my summer to-do list.  We pushed through the mid-summer slump.  My son still prays, “Thank you, God, for a good day with Mommy” when we gather at the dinner table.  I’m proud of myself.

In these last days, my son and I have fallen into a pleasant lazy idleness.  He watches an hour of Pokémon after my husband and daughter leave for work and preschool, while I might do a little light housework.  (Just a little, very light.  Visitors are encouraged not to look too closely and certainly not to run their fingers along the mantelpiece.)  It’s ten o’clock before we determine what we’ll do that morning, perhaps run an errand or ride our bikes.  Lunchtime is getting later and later—twelve thirty, one o’clock—and after lunch we lounge on the couch and read fantasy novels together for an hour or so.  Eventually we’ll be ready to stretch our limbs, and then we’ll meander out to the yard or maybe as far as the park.

Having used up his enthusiasm for soccer, basketball, Frisbee, swings, and slides, my son has begun making up games of his own.  One day he spent an hour hacking down dandelions with a scythe-shaped stick he found.  Another day he spent thirty minutes diligently gathering crabapples to rain down from the top of the jungle gym like fifteen-second fireworks.  Yesterday we hung a Frisbee from a tree branch so my son could throw balls, pinecones, and small sticks at it.  In boredom is a kind of freedom.  My son is enjoying wandering over the grass, noticing ladybugs and unusual rocks, expressing his energies by throwing, hitting, and destroying in harmless ways.

My son doesn’t need me to hack dandelions with him, so I’ve gotten a lot of my own reading done lately.  I’m just finishing Thomas Hardy’s Return of the Native.  I neglected Hardy in college and graduate school; now I’m rectifying that.  The narrative is stately, and very little happens, just like the passing of my own days.

Although I am willing to keep it up, to keep planning little outings and fun activities, my son doesn’t want to be entertained anymore.  His boredom is not restlessness, yet.  He is exploring boredom, probing it, and nurturing within himself the readiness for the next big adventure—second grade.

Our Family Vacation

Friends who are interested can view photos from our recent family vacation at our online photo album.  A family vacation was the last thing to check off my summer to-do list.

Sing, Sing a Song

I spent a lot of time in the car last week listening to my daughter sing.  I don’t usually use the car so much.  In fact, days go by when I don’t use the car at all.  Last week, however, my daughter and I were in and out of the car multiple times every day.  We took my son to day camp on Monday and Tuesday and picked him up again.  (On Wednesday my husband took my daughter to preschool, so she was spared the trip to day camp.)  One day we ran errands—a donation to the thrift store, a quick stop by church, library books into the dropbox, a cup of tea and a blueberry muffin, “a couple of things” at the grocery store.  We were in the car for over an hour that morning.  My daughter sang along with Lisa Loeb’s Camp Lisa.  On Thursday I picked her up early from preschool and brought her back home for lunch, then I drove the kids to their doctor’s appointments.  My daughter bopped along to songs from Sid the Science Kid. On Friday morning we headed up into the mountains for a little family vacation.  My daughter sang through Camp Lisa again.  Then my husband asserted his turn, but later my daughter listened to songs by Elizabeth Mitchell on the iPod.

I love listening to my daughter sing.  She can’t always quite keep up with the music, and she wears such a look of concentration on her face.  I’m amazed at how many songs she knows.

In our cabin overlooking the lake, we were “unplugged”—there was no cd player to slip a cd of lullabies into at bedtime.  I sang my kids to sleep for the first time in years.  I know three songs by heart:  “Amazing Grace,” “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” and “The Rainbow Connection” from The Muppet Movie.

I am a good enough singer that I don’t feel like I drag down the church choir.  I sang in the concert choir in high school and was in the show choir, too.  My brother and sister played in the marching band.  My husband, although a great music lover, can’t carry a tune very far, and my son isn’t showing much musical talent, either. Singing is my thing, even if I am only a good enough singer.  I used to wonder if I would be envious of my own kids if they were better than me at the things that I was good at, those things that are part of my sense of identity.  Listening to my daughter sing in the car, I realize with surprise (and relief) that I am not.  If my daughter goes from the back seat to back stage, with a star on her dressing room door, I will be nothing but thrilled.

Perhaps I will take a little credit.

A Beautiful Morning

Yesterday morning when I woke up I found the front door open and my kids’ breakfast missing from the kitchen counter where I’d set it out the night before.  The kids had carried their cereal and sippy cups out to the front step where they were having a picnic breakfast.  I was invited to join them with my fruit and yogurt.  It was lovely to sit there in the cool of the morning, listening to the birds and being quiet with my children.

I was surprised that they had the idea to take their breakfast outside.  I cannot guess what inspired it.  I am pleased, though, that they knew it would be okay.  I never explicitly gave them permission to have a picnic breakfast—why would I have thought of that?—but they reasoned that it did not break any rules, it did not put them in any danger, and it would not have any negative consequences.  That is the kind of decision-making I want to foster in my children. 

 

A blue sky, leaves shimmering in the breeze, children who are learning to think for themselves—it was a beautiful morning.

It's A Boy

My daughter is the type of little girl I was.  She likes babies and dolls and can play with them for hours.  I’ve always felt I have less in common with my son, who is more like his dad.  My son likes puzzles and robots and building with Legos.  This summer, however, I have discovered new affinities with my son—and released the seven-year-old boy inside myself.

I like to climb rocks, to run in the grass, to throw a Frisbee, to shoot hoops.  My son was not much into sports before, but last year’s P.E. class turned him on to basketball and soccer and taught him not to duck when things are flying at his face.  Now he is eager to play games that I enjoy, too.  To my satisfaction, I am just enough faster than him that I can still catch him in tag.  Next summer he’ll get away.

I also enjoy adolescent fantasy adventure novels with dragons and elves and magical quests.  (It’s no wonder I married my geeky comic-book-reading scientist husband.)  My son likes fantasy novels, too.  We read them together.  We’ve read all of Cressida Cowell’s How To Train Your Dragon series, Elmer and the Dragon, Cosmic, about a twelve-year-old boy who travels into space, and Dragon Rider, about a boy who travels with a dragon in search of the Rim of Heaven.  When my son’s a little older I’ll introduce him to The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe and Harry Potter.  I can’t wait.

Of course six and a half years ago I didn’t care if my baby was a boy or girl, as long as it had ten fingers and ten toes.  Now I am glad that I have a son who can be a little boy with me.

Summertime Black-and-Blues

I bear the marks of motherhood—not stretch marks or gray hairs but black-and-blue shins, scratched ankles, and a farmer’s tan.  Motherhood is taking its toll.