This week, as temperatures on the East Coast flirted with 100 for several days in a row, I headed to Gap Kids to grab a few more bathing suits for the kids. I found, to my shock, not a single swimsuit in the whole store. Children’s Place? Nope. Kmart? All gone. “We’re doing back-to-school now,” the saleswoman told me, waving to an entire wall of backpacks and pencil cases. I suggested that they might have had more luck selling shorts than parkas this week. She seemed unimpressed by my line of reasoning.
Preposterous off-season merchandising is nothing new; there’s always a full-court Christmas press long before the Halloween candy is gone. But this back-to-school thing is kind of a bummer—while I can pooh-pooh it as premature, a quick look at the calendar tells me that my kids’ summer vacation is already half-over. And I hate that.
I may sing a different tune by Labor Day, particularly if the Heat Miser doesn’t back off a bit with the temps, but I love summer vacation. I love the relaxed pace, the firefly-catching, the “lazy mornings” in jammies until we feel like getting dressed. I love the time off from the pell-mell pace of getting three kids out the door in time for the 8:07 a.m. bus, of shuttling them to their afternoons chock-full of activities. Most of all, I love the time off from homework—though it seems that that is a vacation my kids are not supposed to be having. My kindergartener and second-grader both came home with extensive summer reading lists, book reports to write, lists of educational board games for me to purchase and math-skill-honing websites to let my children visit (with my constant, vigilant presence, of course). With every good mid-June intention, I stuck those lists in the kitchen drawer for ease of reference. There they have remained, untouched, ever since. I didn’t think I was opposed to the idea of my kids doing daily times table drills—what else were they going to do for almost three full months?-- but with half of that time now gone, it’s clear that I need to either get cracking, or embrace the slacking off.
And I’m just not sure which way to go. Just when I think “aw heck, kids need a summer!” I’ll have a friend ask me if I can recommend a reading tutor for her kindergartener, “just so he doesn’t fall behind,” and a tsunami of guilt washes over me. So then I’ll announce over 6 pm mac and cheese that the evening’s schedule of playing Math is Awesome!™ will preclude any television-watching, and let’s just say I won’t get a supportive response from those gathered.
Frankly, I think I’m with the kids: I don’t want to play Math is Awesome!™ either. But one of these days, I’ll get them to read a book or three, and on a lazy August afternoon, I hereby promise to get out the flash cards. Just as soon as all the fireflies are caught.
Amy Wilson is the author of WHEN DID I GET LIKE THIS? amzn.to/whendidi
and you can read her blog at motherloadtheblog.com
