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.