Thoughts on the End of August
It’ll come as no surprise to people who know me personally that I can be … let’s call it cranky. Which is why those who know me are often tempted to tell me to just relax, just enjoy your time with your boys, just get into the relaxed rhythm of summer. Be like everyone else! Love summer more than any other time!
But I don’t enjoy summer vacation quite that much, because my summers don’t often have that elusive “relaxed rhythm.” I don’t know if I can pin it on one particular phenomenon: Is it because I can’t afford to take large swaths of time off, or have blowout vacations? Is it because what I remember as a long, fun summer in my childhood (sprinklers, pools, flashlight tag, the beach, playing board games on the porch on rainy days, riding bikes through the woods that connected the dead end street to the local park) doesn’t exist anymore, or at least, not here, where street noise is made by landscaping crews rather than gangs of summer-free barefoot kids?
Whatever the reasons, I have turned into not much of a summer person, and it pains me a little bit. I don’t have to be reminded that the time goes by in a flash, that five minutes ago my kids were playing with a garden hose and some buckets out on the deck to say cool:
Whereas now, as I write, I think they’re in the basement playing a Wii game. Yesterday, it feels like, I was coaxing them to put their faces in the water, and today, I can glance up from my beach chair and see that my older son is half a beach away practicing his front crawl, while my younger kid is on the opposite end of the sand, digging up snails with his friend.
I know that. But it doesn’t help me enjoy rather than wish these long and unproductive days away.
But as I was mulling this August-end post, I started to think of it less as an apology for my attitude about summer, and more of a manifesto: What’s wrong with wanting fall to begin, with wanting school to start, with preferring schedules and a sense of purpose over fallow time? There are, I believe, far fewer people who enjoy every minute of an unstructured summer than any of us might think. We enjoy some of it, sure, but we bemoan the rest, quietly and apologetically. You’re not supposed to admit that lazy mornings aren’t all they’re cracked up to be when you have work to do and the kids claim boredom and get in stupid fights with each other.
Many people have told me that they feel energetic in the summer time. I don’t; I am energized by the crisp new possibilities that, to me, are emblematic of the autumn. I like cooler weather and easier-sleeping nights. I like fresh notebooks and sharp pencils.
There are some cold, hard facts to consider: summer vacation is a wonderful thing, to be sure, but 12 weeks of it is too many for any but a small subset of people. I have a friend with three kids and a three-day-a-week job. She juggles two different day camps (for older kids plus a toddler) for as long as the most reasonably-priced camps are available, and then spends the last couple of weeks of summer drawing up complicated plans for who goes where, when and who can take time off. That’s not fun; that’s a drag. I am freelance and can technically do whatever I want, such as, say, take August off. But as any freelancer knows, you can’t do that without a lot of planning and a big financial hit, so it’s all scrambling, all the time. Meanwhile, my kids run out of things to do (I mentioned the part about the landscaping crews being the modern-day stand-in for the roaming groups of neighborhood kids I spent my summers with back in the stay-at-home mom days, right?) and enthusiasm and – dare I say it – brain cells. Dreading school, I have to believe, is blown all out of proportion when their last contact with school was so long ago.
Leisure is nice, is what I’m saying, but it’s also an illusion, unless you can buy yourself a ton of it, and most of us can’t do that.
So here’s to fall! Here’s to notebooks that have yet to be written in and workbooks whose covers are still attached and unwrinkled, and to new sneakers and soccer games and buses rumbling through the neighborhood.
Hello, September. And August? don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
August 31, 2012 @ 5:56 pm
Thank you. I have been feeling so alone in this very same sentiment. Happy September, indeed! “It’s the most wonderful time of the year…”
August 31, 2012 @ 10:39 pm
This makes me appreciate three things
1. I’m a teacher, so my holidays will match my kids holidays once they are of school age. (Currently one son age 5 1/2 months, but planning on adding to the family).
2. In New Zealand our summer holidays are 6-7 weeks, with three 2 week holidays throughout the year
3. Our summer holidays include Christmas and New Years so Christmas and New Years create a little structure to the holidays.
September 1, 2012 @ 6:27 am
I too struggle with the lack of routine in the summer and expectations for the time that just can be met. I too am energized by fall and the possibilities a new school year presents for the entire family. It’s really my time of new resolutions.
September 1, 2012 @ 8:56 am
Hear! Hear!
As a family with allergies, August is a miserable time. We sneeze non-stop whenever we spend more than five minutes outside, and it’s miserably hot here in the South. We are an outside family during the Spring and Fall, insiders during the super-hot times of summer. I spend August dreaming of “someday” trips to Iceland and Norway. We spend August playing video games, board games, and going to the movies. Pollen counts are lower at night, so we go on moonlit walks through the neighborhood, and have campfires with smore’s.
September 1, 2012 @ 9:42 am
Agreed!! I am FULL TIME self employed and work from home most of the time with an 11 year old screaming and moaning about being bored… he has not been cooperative with the fact that WORK HAS TO COME FIRST as a single mom with house payments and air conditioning to pay for!! LOL. I will be SO HAPPY in 3 days when school starts!
September 1, 2012 @ 12:09 pm
I totally agree love the crisp fall weather and all that accompanies it. I never relax during the summer all the way and you are dead on about the noise of landscapers vs kids running around all day like I did!
September 1, 2012 @ 6:04 pm
I just wrote about this last month here: http://greatwallsofbaltimore.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-summertime-blahs.html
I enjoy the summer weather (most of the time) and I love the endless sunshine. By the end of February, I’m in a deep funk from lack of sun. But I’m also a person that thrives on being busy and too much unstructured time was boring me. Even though my youngest started kindergarten this week, and I miss her like crazy, I’ve been looking at the calender on the fridge, which is filling up with stuff to do, with satisfaction. Snow and darkness at 430, however, can stay far, far away.
September 4, 2012 @ 3:23 am
My thoughts exactly! I truly admire you’re ability to admit and say it!
September 4, 2012 @ 10:39 am
Now that my kids are finally all school aged, I have realized that the time of year when I am most exhausted, fried, cranky… are those 2-3 weeks right before school starts up again. I’ve been trying to make a note of this on my calendar because for some reason it is hard for me to remember.
For other people who aren’t as tired during this period, it seems to be the time to connect up again, gear up for the new school year, or undergo other energy-intensive activities. But for me, during the first couple weeks of the kids’ school year, it’s necessary to take recovery time when and wherever I can find it.
I used to wish I were like those other energetic people. But now I’ve let the wishing go and faced reality. This is simply the way I work. (And maybe my kids are more draining than the average kids. I guess that’s possible too.)
September 5, 2012 @ 1:51 pm
Here’s my take, which I think is somewhere in the middle: like you, I’m usually utterly tired of summer by early August, even though I am one of those “enjoy the moments, live in the now, relax alreaaaady!” types. By, say, August 7, I’m DONE and really ready for them to go back. But, I think those last three weeks, which can feel torturous at times, can also serve a purpose because they make me that much more eager for fall and that much more willing to put the summer behind me. I think if we went back to school the first week of August I wouldn’t feel quite ready, I’d feel more wistful and melancholy and I’d definitely not have my stuff together. As it was, when my boys started school this week, I practically put them to bed in their backpacks.
September 5, 2012 @ 1:55 pm
Really good point, Meagan. I was trying to explain to my kids (fruitlessly, I might add!) WHY the summer vacation is so long — the old farming calendars. And trying to explain how it worked better, logistically, when more moms were at home all the time. But I also tried to talk to them about how they’d feel less anxious (and all of us would be more refreshed and prepared, I suspect) if we had, say, 6 weeks off, then back to school. Fewer tiny breaks throughout the year, and a more months on/weeks off rolling schedule would be better, IMO. Then various options for working parents (like enrichment classes and different kinds of camps for shorter times) would crop up to fill in the gaps. I dunno. They didn’t get it, of course. They’d prefer to just have the schedule that exists now, but swapped. 12 weeks of school, 40 weeks of summer.