Last day of summer vacation

What a sense of relief rushes in on the last day of summer vacation. We made it. We stayed healthy and uninjured; we kept ourselves busy and had fun. The kids bickered, but not unbearably -- though honestly, to me almost any amount is hard to bear. I remember when I was their age my mother using that same word, "bicker," to describe what my sisters and I did, and what's funny is I never really understood back then why it bothered her. "We're not bickering with you," I wanted to say, "so why does it bother you?" My perspective back then was that if you're not the one being argued with -- or criticized, or spoken to rudely -- why do you care that someone else is?

But it's different when you're the mom...although I still can't explain why. Hearing my children bicker with each other grates on my nerves in a primal way that is impossible for me to explain, even as I tell myself that there's nothing so terribly wrong or harmful, and in fact there's probably something quite developmentally appropriate, about their needing to express their differences and assert their emotional territory.

So there was a certain amount of bickering this summer, more than usual for them, but we also had a lot of fun. We took a few daytrips to the beach, went into Boston once for a ferry trip to the harbor islands, spent the July 4th weekend in Maine, ran a 5-mile road race, attended several pool parties, and went out of town for a week -- the kids and Rick to Cooperstown, New York, for a baseball tournament; me to a writers' conference in Colorado -- but mostly we just found ways to have fun around home. We picked blackberries on the driveway and blueberries around the pond; we swam at NARA Beach; we biked to the library; we walked to Ferns for snacks. We consumed our weight (at least Holly's weight) in Kimballs ice cream, but on the plus side, we almost always walked or biked there. Tim played a lot of baseball games; sometimes Holly and I watched. We went to the playground a couple of times and set up the sprinkler in the backyard. Cousins visited. We attended a professional baseball game. Tim had a couple of sleepovers; Holly hosted a birthday party and attended Girl Scout camp.

We had a good old-fashioned summer full of good old-fashioned fun. And bickering. But that's normal. And in 14 hours a new school year begins.