Summer, I Can’t Wait to See You in Pictures
I have two more weeks before my kids go back to school. On the one hand, I want it to be over. I’m wiped out and need a breather. We’ve been partying hard for three solid months and have seen all of the bears. No one ever sleeps at the same time. Seriously, the kids sleep in shifts.
On the other hand, I’m sad (weepy sad because I’m exhausted). Summer is filled with precious time with my kids. There is at least one moment each day, when I can’t believe how lucky I am, snuggling with the baby, reading a book with Daphne, or being surprised by something cool they did. They are the kind of moments I imagined when I thought about having kids way back when. Here’s the rub: In my pre-child musings, those moments were sandwiched between other activities that I recognized as sane. Here’s a possible line-up of moments: 1. dishes, 2. reading on the couch, 3. child playing with toys while I read the newspaper.
Here’s a more realistic string of activities: 1. Kids screaming at each other because they can’t agree on a Netflix program, 2. Me yelling, “TURN OFF THE TV.” 3. A really sweet moment reading with Daphne that is interrupted because I realize the baby is coloring on the toilet with a mascara wand (high quality department store mascara, by the way). 4. Everyone is suddenly starving. It will tun out they were only hungry enough to eat a stolen popsicle while I cooked something they won’t eat. 5. Daphne finds the mascara I should have thrown away. I think about googling the dangers of using mascara that has been previously dipped in the toilet, but decide it’ll probably be fine.
As you can see, number three was really nice. I love reading with the kids. However, those sweet moments are almost never framed by anything other than chaos, housework, or guilt because I’m letting them gorge in front of the TV. That’s why you have to have a photo album. You can see the sweet moments in isolation without a soundtrack of Katy Perry and screaming in background. I need to update my photo album so I can relive summer in silence this fall. It’ll probably make me cry.
Summer is just one more example of how life is out balance, at least my life. Why do we still have a school schedule that follows the harvest? I bet France doesn’t do that anymore. I wish my kids could go to school for four hours a day most of the year with a couple of weeks off here and there. That wouldn’t be ideal for people with full-time jobs, but I doubt summer is either. For my part, I’d have more energy for them and time for work every day. That isn’t going to happen, though, so I’ll send them off to school with a quivering lip in two weeks, sad because I want a break, but not that much of a break, until we do it all again next summer.
