We can only live vicariously through our children’s experience of these long, hot, languid days.
We can only live vicariously through our children’s experience of these long, hot, languid days.
M uch of the country has long since moved into summer break, some having done so as early as in the last weeks of May. New York State schools, sadly, delay summer break interminably. We have an expansive school holiday schedule with a full Christmas and winter break, a spring break, the Jewish high holidays, and several others — and now Juneteenth is a day off, meaning that the state-mandated number of school days cannot possibly be completed before the final week of June. The past few days, when temperatures have been reaching into triple digits, made the children feel as though they had completed a grueling physical task.
They are at the age when it is impossible to tell, by hearing alone, whether their screams during play have been stimulated by sheer delight or by sheer dismemberment of one of their limbs. It is a hawklike yawping roar of either triumph or pain, induced by the collision of bodies on an inflatable waterslide in the backyard. Either way, if they are home, we have to work from the room that has a view of the backyard.
They are at an age when the sensual poetry of summer has somehow seeped into their minds but without any sense of adult limits. Ice cream, baseball, days at the beach, and, for some reason, breakfasts that include waffles or pancakes are all in their mental picture. If they had constructed a summer day for themselves, it would include all these things, along with their parents’ new habit of “thanking God and themselves” for getting air-conditioning installed.
My children know that we’re much more likely to visit Carvel or the frozen-yogurt shop at this time of year. But they talk as if this could happen every single day. In the morning, the six-year-old announces breezily that he is going to get chocolate ice cream today — despite our having no such plans — because today he plans to be good. And frankly, we are lucky that he is starting to motivate himself to do good in this way, even if it’s not for the fear of hell and the love of God, as the Act of Contrition I must teach him this year counsels.
My eight-year-old loves nothing more than a languid day of what he calls “resting.” He guards his “rest” jealously, even though this rest involves his finding a device connected to the internet, where he searches for and watches a few historic highlights of Lionel Messi or even Pelé for about ten minutes. And then, miraculously, he puts it down, immediately puts his shoes on, and dashes out our front door to kick his soccer balls for hours at a time in august (soon August) homage to the immortal players. He comes in drenched in sweat, enjoying his “rest” from academic labors and all the other enriching activities we have normally scheduled for him.
My ten-year-old spends much of her time outside of school in dance studios. But she has a little tomboy in her still. She has been pushing us to teach her golf and expresses a firm, ready, willful desire to join her father and uncles on those rare weekend days when we are given license to escape the women and children for 18 holes. To be honest, her devotion to dancing has so strengthened her body, and quickened her abilities of imitation, that she quickly achieves minimal competence in any sport she tries. At her brother’s Little League games, she simply deems herself ball girl. She takes a glove into foul territory, and whenever the ball comes her way, she returns it with an elegant, firmly delivered strike, taking the momentum from the ground through her legs and right into her throw. The slap into a coach’s glove makes her daddy proud.
I’m envious of them, of course. They play while I work. And when I was their age, I was just a latchkey kid — roaming from one friend’s house to another. I had more screen time in my one-TV house with a Nintendo than they do with half a dozen screens around our house. And I envy how they experience these summers: as long stretches of time to take stock of themselves, and to lose themselves.
For them, summer is still almost endless, even with New York State’s attempt to put it off. I have to write down everything I see them do, because for me time is flying. The precocious pip-squeak girl, my favorite soccer player, and my ice-cream-obsessed kid were in diapers yesterday, and by tomorrow it seems they’ll be in mortgage debt just like me. I’m cutting out early today. I have a can’t-miss appointment to watch my children test their physical limits and my patience on the waterslide.