Life continues to take me by surprise: anticipating a ton of stress this month, I have had one of the best summer seasons ever. Part of it comes from not really thinking about having a summer season.
Knowing that River’s job would be pretty much all-consuming, and that only day-trips would work if we wanted to go much of anywhere, and that even then, we mostly would want to be home doing nothing, we’ve kept plans to a minimum. Although we’ve been just ambitious enough to push ourselves to try some new things as well.
At the very end of June, the kids went off to stay with grandparents while I attended a journalism conference at UMass. River dove into work and didn’t come up for air much. Our marriage may have suffered just a slight bit, as we could have used that time to, I don’t know, have a conversation, but we did get a lot out of the time on our own. We rejoined with the kids and all trekked over to Tanglewood to see A Prairie Home Companion, apparently an annual gig over there on the holiday weekend.
Knowing how good it is to be at Tanglewood, especially when the weather is so yummy as it was on that day, we packed ourselves an extremely special picnic. My mother had never visited this place, and for my stepdad, it had been a long time. They seemed to enjoy themselves.
We dined on crazy good stuff, including some Mediterranean style food as well as slap-it-together-yourself cold cuts. There was fruit, there was bread, there was cold juice. We just lay there like sunning seals feasting on fish. The show happened, and we listened—it was too far away to see it—and we marveled at the crowd of billions. Or so it seemed.
About an hour into the show I started to feel like I never wanted to leave. This is how it goes at Tanglewood. You huff and puff to get there, packing gear, driving, getting stuck in traffic, whatever. You unload, you fuss about finding a good spot. Maybe you do, maybe you don’t. But wherever you are you settle in, and then you just want to stay. Sleep. Wake up with none of it changed.
The next day, having shaken off the dream of a summertime Tanglewood show, we headed off to see more grandparents. More amazingly beautiful weather ensued, and we were lucky enough to enjoy it at my favorite New Hampshire beach, friends and family included.
There was some magical spell in the air making the children happy and the adults at peace. Wandering around and looking at rocks and water, or just sitting under a tree in the shade admiring the way the sun sparkled, was enough to satisfy everyone. Rock-skipping was taught. Freezing ocean water was dabbled in. Wailing babies near us waddled around the sand and pebbles in soggy diapers, accompanied by fit, tanned moms.
Then we enjoyed a great set of fireworks for the holiday. And after heading home, I enjoyed the show right from my front porch. We’d left the kids with their grandparents, so they weren’t home to see this year’s show. In that sense, it felt like a secret. They were off having their own good times.
The kids were gone for another three or four days, during which I was able to schedule a couple of social as well as business meetings for myself. I started to wonder if I actually had any children, and maybe it had all been a (mixed) dream. When the children returned, I wondered if they were really mine. When they didn’t leave again, I remembered that they were.
We’ve since had a few weeks of “normalcy,” if such a thing can be had around here, with ample boredom (for me, a necessary ingredient of summer, to which I am duly introducing my children), as well as plenty of crazed excitement and many nights of staying-up-too-late. Our idea of pushing the envelope was to buy Pirates of the Caribbean impulsively at Target, and then watch it as a family, the whole time waiting to see if the PG-13 rating would cause us to regret our decision. (It never did.) There you go, Risk-takers R Us.
Just recently we also celebrated a birthday milestone in the family, which has caused me to adjust the ages of the children when I rattle them off for people I meet. In all, not much of a big change, although we are now well-equipped, thanks to the birthday fairies, for another family bike ride some time, and the youngest is no longer on a trike. Poor kid. He’s on training wheels, and probably not for long.
I may be ready to take off my own training wheels some time soon as well, seeing as how I feel like I am finally getting this parenting thing down.