dadvmom

Through a mixed-up series of not-very-interesting events, I ended up walking two miles this afternoon in last year’s flip-flops. After I snuffed out my irritation, and jettisoned the useless shoes, I found myself noticing things about my town that despite traveling these roads every day, I had never observed before. There is something about traveling on foot that opens my eyes.

In an effort to capitalize on/make fun of the popularity of the HBO series, the coffee shop had a pastry display entitled, “Game of Scones.” I usually go to the Starbucks, since the chain has better parking, but I made a mental note to give this local shop another try next time I need java out. Two doors down, I saw a sign advertising a “World-famous Comedy Traffic School.” I puzzled over this. Was this a comedy school that had a lot of traffic come through its doors, i.e. had trained a lot of comics? Or was it a Traffic School that taught with great humor? Either way, I had never heard of the joint and it was only about a mile from my house. I will have to look it up.

The local art museum had a new exhibit opening. I am forever making tentative plans to go there, but have yet to set one foot in the door. Since there was no line and no cover, I took a slow (barefoot) lap around the gallery. It occurred to me that, in general, canvases depicting naked folks on trapezes are not my aesthetic. But, I feel thankful to live in a place that encourages artistic endeavors, and I moved on.

I picked up a flyer for a Pilates studio in the basement of the knitting studio nearby. Everybody I know who does Pilates is rail thin. Did Pilates make them that way or is Pilates a skinny girl sport? Is it even fair to call it a sport? What is the difference between exercise and sport anyway? Jerseys? Competition? A snack bar? I was distracted from answering this question by what seemed to be a disproportionate amount of dog poop smashed into the sidewalk on Main Street. When I visited Paris, I remember this, too. Shop owners hosed off their sidewalks most mornings. We have weekly street sweeping in town. I know because I was ticketed a few weeks ago for not moving my car. But do we have sidewalk cleaners? Or maybe folks should just clean up after their dogs.

As I turned off into my hood, I noticed that one of my neighbors still has Christmas decorations up. A trumpeting angel. And quite a few strands of lights. Or maybe s/he was getting a jump start on this upcoming season. There is quite a bit of peer pressure around here to deck out your house and yard. Another neighbor has turned four or five kiddie pools into makeshift garden beds. Both cool and tacky. I decided we should all be friends.

As I arrived home, sore-footed and sweaty, it occurred to me that I could probably apply this same exercise in perspective to my own family. We trip and stumble out the door most days, late to something, forgetting something else. Most days, I think the kids know exactly what I am going to say even before I say it.

“Can I play on the iPad?”

“Did you fold your clothes yet?”

“Can I have a snack?”

“You can have veggies.”

And so on, and so on.

We get in ruts, and travel the same well-worn paths. I hustle them along without really hearing them. Without seeing.

With the start of summer vacation this week, I think what excites me most is the chance to take some new steps together — to walk, bike, jump, and hike — to open our eyes to one another, and be surprised by what we discover hidden in plain sight.

PS — Speaking of noticing, this is my new favorite family portrait.  Lizzie drew it.  First off, look how skinny I am.  Seriously, my legs go on for days.  Second, look how no one is crying or hitting or spitting soup back into a bowl.  When my kid thinks about her family, this is what she sees:  smiling people holding hands.  This warms my heart.

As the school year winds down, there is really only one thing left to decide: where are we sending the kids to summer camp?

If your neighborhood is anything like mine, you have a multitude of choices. Just thumbing through our local directory, I see Lacrosse Camp, Ballet Camp, Forensics Camp, Archery Camp, Bible Camp, Volleyball Camp, Sewing Camp, Reading Camp, and even a Camping Camp. There are beaucoup opportunities this June, July, and August. A bunch sound super-cool.

Except I don’t think we are going to do any of them.

Working parents: I get it. School is closed. You need places to park your kids. You folks, I understand. But the rest of us? The stay-at-home dads? The work-from-home moms? What is our excuse? Was there some meeting I missed when we all got together and decided to pee on summer?

But my daughter loves soccer. So play soccer with her.

But my son loves to paint. Then give him paper and a brush.

Since when did a child’s passing interest in an activity translate into automatic enrollment in summer camp? Why are we so eager to contract out this parenting stuff? Last year, I paid 300 bucks for my daughter to participate in a week of Music Camp — Monday-Friday, 9-5 — culminating in a performance on Saturday afternoon. I’m not sure any experience has ever made her dislike music more.

And I’m not alone. I know folks who spend thousands of dollars to bounce their children from one ill-run, overpriced camp session to the next. Our kids are frazzled and exhausted. In July. During the school year, we have accelerated the pace of academic skills in young children. We over-homework, over-test, and over-schedule. But summer…summer used to be untouchable — marshmallows, fireflies, skinned knees, ice cream. What the heck happened?

I would keep them home, but everybody else is at camp and I don’t want them to be bored. Why not? Boredom is good for kids. It’s the big empty field of possibility. And it is a necessary part of summer. Boredom inspired our epic Kick the Can battle of August, 1985. Boredom inspired us to invent Tree Tag, a game that only ended with blood or mayhem. Boredom gave birth to Mud Bakery, Baby in the Air, and countless other awesome/useless games to fill idle time. Defying boredom used to be the creative work of childhood. We drew with chalk, and rode bikes, and had lemonade stands, and planted gardens, and held talent shows, and picked dandelions, and walked to the library, and stayed up too late, and awoke without an alarm. It was like retirement for children. We learned how to be at ease in our own skin.

Now summer has become Chess Camp, Baseball Camp, and Pottery Camp. On balance, chess, baseball, pottery…these are all terrific hobbies. But do you really want to knit for five hours every day? Or play the violin? If I were a kid, I would be afraid to show a predilection for much of anything. Do one card trick and you are off to Magic Camp. Have a bake sale and it’s Cooking Camp for you.

But I don’t know how to play chess, so I HAVE to send the kids to camp. I hem my skirts with a stapler. Believe me, I understand the allure of Sewing Camp. But I also like the idea of my children and I learning something together. Last month, we tried a Paleo cookbook. This week, we are muddling our way through Intro to Piano. We played a clumsy version of “Heart and Soul” before bed last night. It sounded like “Chopsticks,” but it was great fun.

I am not against all organized summer activities. I know high school students who take Math courses or SAT Prep to get their schedules in order for the upcoming school year. My friend’s daughter is trying for a scholarship, so she attends gymnastics clinics throughout the summer. I, myself, went to Show Choir Camp. Yup. Twice. Super-nerdy. Also fantastic. For four nights, we hung out in a college dorm, ate pizza, and congregated with other singing and dancing nerdballs just like us. But we were fifteen, not five.

This kindergarten camp stuff is different. Parent-driven. Like some bizarre competition to get our children ahead. As though plopping a kid into Soccer Camp at age four will ensure high school varsity stardom. I’m afraid we are raising a generation of torn rotator cuffs and worn-out knees. We teach our children drive. We would be wise to teach them leisure, too.

So, sure. Book a camp, maybe even two. But otherwise, man, let the kids play. Stake out July. Declare August sacrosanct. Rededicate summer to barbecues, swimming pools, mosquito bites, and bicycles. Make the most difficult question your kids answer be: Will the lightening bugs really die if I don’t poke holes in the lid? This isn’t just nostalgia. It is necessity. These are glory days. They are numbered. And we are missing them.

Originally published by the New York Observer.

My husband and I vacationed separately this spring.

Friends have asked whether our marriage is okay.

It is. Though sometimes we daydream about leaving. Just hopping in the car and driving away.

Not from one another. From the children.

It’s not that we dislike them. They are delightful. They walk and talk and eat soup. But we also kind of hate them. Not in a mean way. Just in a we-wish-they-lived-somewhere-else-sometimes kind of way.

I like the idea of family time. The five of us in the car on an adventure — to explore a canyon, a riverbed, a zoo. But in reality, time spent together with our children is just awful.

Our kids are two, five, and ten. There is very little that entertains all three of them. We’ve tried biking. The oldest does okay, but the younger two are basically ballast, adding seventy pounds to the bicycle trailer of whichever parent happens to be healthiest at the moment we set out. We’ve tried skiing. My husband and I hit the slopes with the oldest kiddo while the little ones run up a tab in the childcare room, and trade colds and flu bugs with the other inmates. We’ve tried hiking, but on our last rocky sojourn, we carried two-and-a-half crying children the last three-fourths of a mile.

For birthdays and holidays, we would prefer to give our children experiences rather than toys. But most experiences come with a height and weight requirement. At the amusement park, the child who was over forty-eight inches tall rode roller coasters, while the munchkins spun in circles on flying bananas and elephants. When we attempted horseback riding, only the girls and I rode, while my husband and the toddler napped in the car.

Even when we are together, we are not.

So this year, we called it like it is. Dad and Katie camped the Grand Canyon while Mom, Lizzie, and Henry visited family in the Midwest. For the most part, this division worked. I like to hobnob and kvetch with relatives. My husband is good for about twenty minutes before he’s off to nap or play chess on his phone. Conversely, he enjoys beef jerky and sleeping under the stars. I don’t mind camping, but after about four hours, I miss salads. And chairs. So this split arrangement suited us.

Surely there were inequities: Lizzie missed additional school days, while Katie begrudgingly had to attend. I drove in spring snow, while my husband came back with a tan. But there were also advantages. He was able to take one child to the Canyon without worrying that the other two would fall in. I visited my ninety-four-year-old grandmother without my tween interrupting to find her favorite programs on the Disney Channel. I also spent a perfectly wonderful afternoon with my five-year-old. We went shopping, to tea, and had a lengthy conversation about kittens. I was not impatient with her like I so often am when corralling all three kids in and out of the car. Everyone had individual attention and age-appropriate escapades. The ten-year-old canoed with her Dad while 2000 miles away, the little ones went to the dinosaur museum with their auntie and uncle. And our children — the kids who routinely smack one another with tennis rackets and chase each another with sticks, the people who proclaim, “I wish I never had a sister!” — these clowns actually had time to miss one another. Maybe we need less family time rather than more.

Or maybe the whole point of family vacations is not enjoyment but endurance. Maybe traveling with kin is supposed to be cataclysmic. Your job is simply to survive and tell the story. My husband remembers a family sailing trip to Greece as one of the mountaintop experiences of his childhood. He caught an octopus. He learned to snorkel. He dragged behind a boat in the Cephalonian Sea. When I ask his parents about this same trip, they remember the family unity, the way they sang together, fished together, and ate what they caught. How they shared their dreams under an impossibly blue sky. But I call bullshit. I bet if I had witnessed the week during which they were all trapped in close quarters on that listing sloop, I would have seen navigational discord and tantrums, seasickness and tedium, and at least one person threatening to abandon ship.

But that’s not what they remember.

And it turns out, it is the memory — the idea of family time — that matters. The essence of the experience is what lasts. Thus, our children believe they are awesome campers, rather than the jackasses who argued over the s’mores sticks until someone caught on fire. They believe they can kayak, surf, and paddleboard, even though when we do those things, the girls complain about “the ocean getting them wet,” while the youngest rolls on the beach and eats sand. They tell people they like to bike, hike, and ski.

If that is the case, maybe one of these days, my husband and I will drive, fly, or even sail somewhere with all three of our children. As long as, when it is all over, we can drive, fly, or sail somewhere without them. Because regardless of what they remember, I know we will need a vacation to recover from that ragged, wonderful, bullshit vacation. And with any luck, as we reflect back on the memories, it will all turn into the same glorious trip.

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