Hiya Reader!
This past summer was basically one big wasted opportunity. I had a Grown Up Summer™, by which I mean I didn’t do anything fun.
There’s a moment we experience in our late teens/early twenties, when we realize that summer is not an automatic vacation. We’re expected to work right through blue skies, rising temperatures, and the suspicion that everyone else is having more fun. Suddenly, shockingly, enjoying summer requires some effort. Not a lot - my own youthful summertime jams were road trips, music festivals, drinking vast amounts of beer and finding clothing-optional swimming holes.
As you age, summertime fun starts to morph into somewhat more effortful and expensive endeavors. Maybe you want to take it international, or your adventures require more elaborate gear. You have to ask for days off, rather than just quitting that summer job a few weeks early, or calling in sick to extend your trip. (I never did this! I don't think...)
Increased responsibility starts to replace those carefree days of youth. It feels unfair; you're working hard, shouldn't you get to enjoy the fruits of your labor? Instead, you're expected to read email at night, your job requires a whole separate wardrobe, and the world seems to be conspiring to keep you down, man.
And make no mistake, those slick ads indicating that people just like you (albeit more well-groomed and outfitted) are driving brand-new Jeeps to barbecues and bonfires on the beach are there to make us experience sharp, gnawing FOMO. Just a little more money, they hint, a little more success, and you, too, can live the good life.
If you take on parenthood, all bets are off; summertime now requires planning worthy of a wartime general. You may find yourself choosing between day camp and a new-to-you but definitely used-by-someone else minivan. Now a big trip means extra plane tickets, curtailing your drinking, and having to make sure everyone has access to food they'll actually eat at some ungodly hour. It's not that you can't have fun, it's just that fun is now more a by-product of your vacation than the main event.
While your kids are school-aged, there is still a very obvious summer to be had. Later, it's not as pronounced; there isn't the same sense of immediacy, and you may be well into July before you realize you'd better get something on the books - this nice weather isn't going to last forever. This describes my current era; one in which I'm not bowing to pressure and therefore sometimes forget to do anything at all.
So I spent much of my summer in the air-conditioned blandness of my home, gazing longingly at the garden, watching my beloved plants crisp to a toasty golden brown. Let’s be honest, climate change is making summer a lot harder to enjoy around here, as the temperature climbs way past comfortable and up into WTH is happening??
Originally I was thrilled to spend the entire summer at home - I can’t remember the last time I didn’t have a trip to prepare for. No packing, no last-minute trips to Target for tiny toiletries, no agonizing over whether to spring for better seats. I'd be home for the cherry harvest, and I'd get to just sit around and enjoy the season.
I thought that me being home and it being summer would be enough; I’d drink my coffee in the sunshine and work in the garden and write stuff and enjoy the modest nature that surrounds me in my home. And yeah, that happened, but... it was kind of dull. Maybe if I lived smack dab in nature, like my sister the farmer does, it would be different. Here’s the view from her back door:
Now that's a place that would make summer feel special, even if all you did was drink it in. Or is that gorgeous grass not really any greener than my own? The thing is, I'm single and my kids don’t really need me to plan things for them anymore, so I have to be responsible for my own fun, and this year I kind of dropped the ball. And I think it’s partly because somewhere in the back of my mind I still think of summer as vacation in and of itself. Like, why should I have to go somewhere or do something in order to love the hell out of the season?
But I am no longer eight years old, building a pine needle fort in the woods (how did THAT seem like reasonable building material?) or riding my bike to Pat & Tony’s for candy. No trips to Storrs Pond for swimming and the snack bar. No nights on the screened porch re-reading Henry Reed, Inc. for the millionth time, or catching fireflies in the yard.
In short, none of the magic that made summer such a childhood delight. It seems that, like everything else, summer fun requires work in adulthood, and I managed to forget that this year. Which is not to say that it was miserable! Or even unpleasant. It was honestly a pretty relaxing few months. Knock on wood, I have many summers yet to come, and I’m promising myself to remember to try harder to have fun, oxymoronic as that sounds.
Anyway, here’s hoping you did a better job than I and had a truly spectacular season! Welcome to fall-turning-to-winter and, always, cheers to learning from our mistakes and doing better next time.
xo, Julia
