I have had a real job – an actual 9-to-5, have to wear real pants, capital J job – for so long now that I don’t even bother to get wistful when I flip the calendar to… June. June, July and August have long ceased to be synonymous with “endless laziness punctuated with ice cream and stained with snowballs” for me. I still love summer – tomato sandwiches, thunderstorms, late humid twilight, ripe peaches, sweaty outdoor parties, seersucker, iced tea, thick morning air, sandals – but it’s now just my favorite season and no longer a way of life.
I do feel kind of bad for Ruby, though, because her school adheres to an extended year calendar. I know logically that this is a good thing. It helps to ensure that kids who might otherwise fall through the cracks in the summertime stay engaged for longer; the school also provides breakfast, lunch and something called a “dinner pack” for students who need it, which is a crucial resource for a lot of families. I am not struggling so much that I rely on that to feed my family, but money is tight enough that I am relieved at not having that many weeks of day camp to pay for. But I do feel kind of bad that she only gets six weeks off. After this week, she still has two more to go, and she goes back to school the first week of August, whereas my stepson, who attends private school, has been off since May 24 and doesn’t go back until mid-August. Right now, Ruby takes it in stride because she really doesn’t know any different, but I am betting I only have one or two more years, max, before she starts complaining about the injustice of it all.
I guess the upside of it is that when she gets to the real world, the notion of no summer at all won’t seem quite so harsh, although she probably still will have been spoiled by blissfully long college breaks. And in the meantime, I am trying to make sure that even if she doesn’t get to sleep in and do nothing all day quite yet, we are not missing a moment of summer-as-a-season. So far, we have made popsicles, eaten ice cream, played in the sprinkler, picked a tomato from our backyard garden, gone swimming and stood on the front porch to watch a thunderstorm roll in. I am hoping that one weekend soon, we can go to Bay St. Louis for a night and drive to the Northshore to pick berries, two activities I remember fondly from my childhood.
What are you looking forward to doing this summer?
