Summer Break Dreams

These are the good old days

I was minding my own business when I got served up a heaping dose of nostalgia. The memories widget on my phone directed me to a video I made two summers ago, compiling moments of my daughter exploring in the backyard.

This is not the exact video, but here is another one of my favorite-ever videos from our garden, with my little girl’s sweet two-year-old voice. My heart:

The sound of her voice and the sight of her chubby cheeks made me feel such intense bittersweetness. It feels so long ago and so close. I thought to myself, “That was the best summer of my entire life.” Being with her in the yard, looking at bugs. Just me and her all day. It was intense, but it was the best.

Julio and I remind each other often, and especially when things feel tough: These are the good old days. No matter what happens outside our house, the three of us are living a precious time. This is her only childhood. This is our only time with her as a child. No matter what comes next.

The last couple of weeks have been a press on my part to finish a second draft of my book. The book has been a decade in the living and a couple of years in the writing. I thought I had a completed draft at the end of last summer, but when I read it back, I realized it was far from finished. Inspired by a post from Sheridan Cass, I set a goal for myself to finish another draft by the end of May. The book is a memoir in essays about my time as a jail librarian and the transition to new motherhood and alpaca farming, and what I learned from empathy and curiosity along the way. At the start of last week, I thought I was almost done, and I still ended up writing 40 single-spaced pages, finishing the draft on Saturday night.

Because the draft is just a draft, and in writing it I discovered so much more work to do, it does not feel like a finished job, but I uncovered insights and direction in the process that I think will help the next draft really lock the story in. And the volume of work I did in that last week—while also being present for so much play time—gave the last few days a feeling reminiscent of the end of the school year.

Really, I’m an autumn. When I was young and very studious, I always felt a little depressed during the transition to summer vacation. Today, I encountered that familiar, wide-open feeling after finishing my term papers. After spending so much time intensely focused on an intellectual project, the relief of summer created a spacious day for noticing the details I often rush by.

I spent time in the yard, listening to the rhythmic ripping of the alpacas eating the grass.

I curled up next to my elderly dog and watched her nap, thinking about what she looked like as a puppy.

I took a long walk with my husband and noticed houses I somehow hadn’t seen before.

I thought about how the start of summer break highlights the shift from one season to another, literally and symbolically. At the end of this summer, my girl starts kindergarten and will spend more time each day in school. On paper, the added hours aren’t much, but they are weighing on me.

When she was brand new, I felt a protective instinct over my ambitions, pulling on the edges of my love and joy, because I knew this baby phase would end. Someday, she would start to spend more time away from me, and I didn’t want to feel estranged from myself when that day came.

I wish I’d given myself more time to release into the fleeting, precious baby years. I know that I could lop off my right arm and still think I could have done more, but I could have given myself more grace. Trusted myself more to keep in touch with me. Because I now know that kindergarten is around the corner, and she is growing into this marvelous, hilarious little person, and I can feel an identity crisis coming, despite how hard I worked to protect myself. Joke’s on me, but I’m grateful for it all nonetheless.

Then, I started working on this post, and I discovered a little trick that my memory played on me. In my mind, the summer my daughter was two and the summer she was three blended into one perfect, long summer. The “best summer of my life” was actually two different summers.

If my memory can do that, why not add on? Mix in some new, perfect, endless summer days.

I was hardly working on this post when I was recruited into a game in which my husband was a menacing gorilla, and somehow my daughter and I ended up being a cub and a mama bear pursued by said gorilla. There was a lot of screaming and laughing. It was such a wild rumpus, I wish our windows hadn’t been open for it. As bedtime approached and we all felt exhausted from roaring, laughing, and (carefully) running up and down the stairs, my cub suggested that to end the game, the bears and the gorilla should become friends. Then, she concluded, “This game was adapted by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler” (aka the writer and illustrator of several of her favorite books). Just when you think you can’t laugh any harder.

Summer Plans

Nostalgia seems to be thick in the zeitgeist this summer. Or maybe just in my algorithm. I read somewhere that the worst part for Millennials about being dunked on by Gen-Z is “You know they’re just sitting there dressed like season 2 of Friends.” I felt that. Also, I want to be dressed like Season 2 of Friends.

But I have been thinking of the best parts of summer when I was a kid.

I have also seen a lot of nostalgia for library Summer Reading Programs, and I must say, with all of the love in my heart, get off social media and get thee to the library. A lot of public libraries include adults in summer reading. Go! I helped run a modest Summer Reading program in an actual county jail. Your public library probably has goals and prizes for grown-ups.¹

Obviously, we are doing summer reading. I am woefully behind on my reading, and I have also picked three books for us to read together and then watch the movie: Harriet the Spy, The Wild Robot, and The Tale of Despereaux. (We are about a third through Harriet the Spy, and I am having to edit as I read because Harriet says some quite mean things, and I did not remember that.)

I still relate to her so hard.

I have also been thinking about what meant so much to me about those summers when my daughter was a toddler, and I think it was the slowness. So, I have some simple plans:

• Watch a bunch of ‘90s movies with Julio. We are now halfway through My Best Friend’s Wedding, because he goes to bed early.²

• Learn more about the fireflies who are (fingers crossed) showing up in Colorado again.

• Time in the backyard, watering the garden, looking for native bees.

• More sidewalk chalk.

• Picnic dinners.

• Letting the alpacas graze in the backyard while we hang out with them.

• My daughter and I did a bunch of fun activities last week, including museum and library trips, and when I asked what her favorite part was, she said the scavenger hunt we did while on a long walk. So, more of that.

• Trips to the community pool.

• Looking for shapes in the clouds.

• Tent forts on rainy days.

What is your favorite memory of your childhood summers? Do you have summer plans or goals? Tell me in the comments.

1. I was trying to fact-check myself and discovered that the county where I live now and the county where I grew up, many states away, are running the same summer reading program. So, if you are my friend and live back home, you must do summer reading like I am. Must. I will follow up with you.

2. This Dialoguing post on the movie is pitch-perfect.

34 thoughts while watching 'My Best Friend’s Wedding' from an off-duty therapist