Playing cards

My 11-year-old and I played cards for over an hour last night before bedtime.

This is unusual. I am not someone who ordinarily plays cards. I am, in fact, someone who will go out of her way to avoid playing cards. For a long time, I've seen it as the ultimate show of pointlessness. When the world still contains more books than any of us will ever be able to read in even the longest of human lifetimes, why spend time staring at cards?

But Holly's cousins taught her a new card game during a sleepover earlier this month, and she was eager to teach it to me. Because I think it's good for kids to have the role-reversal experience of teaching something to their parents, and because it's good for me to make myself learn something new, and mostly just because school starts in a week and I wanted to make the summer evening draw out a little longer, I agreed to play cards with Holly.

And it was so much more fun than I expected. For one thing, it reminded me of my grandparents' lakeside summer house during my childhood, where after dinner, everyone of all generations played cards. I can still remember the desk drawer in which my grandmother kept pads of paper and golfers’ pencils for keeping score of our gin rummy games.

But it also reminded me of why it really is worthwhile to play cards once in a while. Yes, even when there are issues of the New Yorker not yet finished and classic Russian novels not yet begun.

Because playing cards is perhaps the best way to just stop and focus, make the moment last. When you're playing cards, you get caught up in the numbers and the strategy, the luck and twists of fate and intellectual gymnastics involved in trying to win the game. During the hour we played cards, I wasn't thinking about writing assignments or current events or household tasks that needed to be done, the way I do when I'm taking a walk or cooking or driving or doing almost anything else that feels fairly mindless. There was nothing on my mind at all but the game.

And that, I realized as Holly and I dealt and discarded and exchanged and shuffled, is the best reason to play cards. Paradoxically, it is mindless -- just as I'd always feared -- but also commands full attention. For that hour, I was thinking about nothing except the activity to which Holly and I had devoted ourselves.

It's a simple enough notion, and yet it's something that I as a parent do far too seldom. So often, I'm half paying attention to my kids and half thinking about doing something else, or else I’m not just thinking about it but actually doing something else at the same time. Multi-tasking, multi-thinking, multi-focusing.

Not yesterday evening, though. Yesterday evening, we just played cards. It was all-encompassing for that one hour. And in that singular respect, it was just as valuable as any hour I've spent doing anything else this summer.

Summer games

Normally, when I think about games evocative of summer evenings, badminton, ladderball and Frisbee come to mind: games that I have memories of playing on warm nights as daylight lingers in the sky long after dinner.

But this summer, we've been on a ping-pong kick.

It doesn't make sense, because we could play ping-pong at any time of year. But we don't. In the two years since we moved to this house, the ping-pong table remained folded up in the garage until last month, when I wrestled it down the basement steps. And somehow, in the weeks since school ended, the kids and I have fallen into the habit of heading down to the basement after dinner for a few games of ping-pong.

There are a few reasonable justifications for this. The basement is always cool, regardless of how warm and humid it is outdoors. Whereas the yard has clouds of mosquitoes, the basement is generally insect-free. And the light doesn't change at all as the evening -- and the ping-pong match -- progresses.

And we all love ping-pong. This year, for the first time, Tim regularly beats me. I still beat Holly, but she's earning a respectable number of points each game. Holly plays with me willingly enough, but for her the real delight comes in a match against Tim. It doesn't matter to her that her big brother lacks the kindly grace to purposely cede a few points to her whenever he gets too far ahead, the way I do; the thrill is in getting his undivided attention for 21 or more points.

It's not terrific exercise, but at least we're upright and moving. It's not major bonding, but it gets us together having fun. It doesn't help us develop any critical learning areas, but Holly has become an ever more graceful loser and Tim has learned to take the occasional break from gloating over his net shot to compliment my topspin once in a while.

So even though a good game of badminton on the damp grass as the sun sets is one of the great pleasures of summertime, for us, so is a basement ping-pong match, at least this summer. The tradition may continue into the fall, but I doubt it. By then, evenings will mean homework for the kids, meetings and community events for me.  The pleasure of ping-pong is in its immediacy: it is what we are doing right now, midsummer of 2013. It’s a little bit fruitless and kind of silly, but it’s fun. Which in a way gives it the very best characteristics of summer vacation.

Midsummer

Every year when I'm in Colorado, I have to remind myself: It's like this because you're on vacation.

It wouldn't be like this every day if you lived here, I tell myself. You wouldn't spend hours sitting on the patio admiring the flower beds that the condo's groundskeeper plants and tends, and you wouldn't spend hours more hiking or biking or walking along the walking trails. You're doing that because you're on vacation. If you lived here, you'd do laundry and shop for groceries and plan meals and return emails and go to the dry cleaner (where is the dry cleaner in this town, anyway? I don't think I know. In 40 years of vacationing here, I've never taken anything to be dry-cleaned. That's because I don't wear anything when I'm here that requires dry-cleaning). You'd undergo dental procedures and host family events and volunteer to be a room parent in the kids' classrooms.

The fact that I do none of that in Colorado is, of course, what makes it vacation. Which is why it's so hard to leave once our two-week stay is up.

But this time, before leaving, I resolved to take a little bit of vacation home with me. Not just a sprig of fragrant sagebrush from the side of the jogging path, or a t-shirt with a witty message about life in the mountains, or the less welcome pile of credit card receipts from our various dinners out, since a big part of us being on vacation is me declaring a sabbatical from my usual daily meal-planning responsibilities.

This time, I'm taking vacation mindset home with me.

In part, this is due to the calendar dates. We often travel toward the end of the summer. By the time we get home most years, the date on the calendar dictates that it's time for me to start thinking about school supply lists and room parent responsibilites for the upcoming year. And in general, I like finishing our summer travels and knowing it's time to get back to real life with the looming approach of my favorite season, fall.

This year, circumstances were such that we vacationed at the beginning of the summer, less than a week after school ended for the kids. It felt wonderful to wrap up my graduation-planning responsibilities, wash out the kids' lunchboxes for the last time, and start packing.....but it also meant that we returned with the whole rest of the summer looming before us, and no more travel plans at all.

Which is what motivated me to be proactive about continuing to make it a vacation. I thought about all that I liked best about being in Colorado for the past two weeks. The family time. The abundant time outdoors. The fact that I was more lenient with my diet and never stepped on the scale. Getting to sleep beyond my usual weekday 5:10 a.m. alarm. Devoting much more time to reading than I normally do. 

I can do that, I told myself. Those are all things I can take home with me, just as easily as sagebrush or t-shirts.

So now I'm home but determined to keep making summer a vacation. Yes, I'm back at work, with piles of deadlines looming, interviews to conduct, research to implement. But it's also mid-July. So I'm being lenient with my diet. And taking walks after dinner. And reading novels instead of the New York Times. And reverting to last summer's standard of cutting back to one blog entry a week instead of my usual two.

It was a great trip, but there are still nearly two months left before the kids go back to school, and I'm determined to make the most of it. We may be far from the Rockies, but we're in New England, with beaches to visit, ponds to swim in, and smaller mountains to climb. I'll work around my deadlines and refuse to lose sight of the fact that summer continues even if I have no more airline tickets to redeem. 

And I'll even avoid wearing clothes that need to be dry-cleaned. Because if I've gone forty years without needing a dry cleaner in Aspen, I can surely go seven more weeks without one at home.

The simplest summer fun

The timeless truth of summer vacation is that sometimes the simplest parts are the best.

Yesterday, the kids and I spent the afternoon playing games in our driveway. First we played Frisbee; then badminton; then ladder ball; and we put all the games away only because it got to be 4:30 and I still needed to go grocery shopping.

It was a fairly notable contrast to other events this summer, days we’ve traveled farther, taken part in somewhat more exotic endeavors, and certainly spent a lot more money. And yet it was just as much fun.

For the most part, this summer has kept us relatively close to home, but we’ve still fit in a decent amount of variety in our activities. We’ve gone miniature golfing. We’ve taken several beach trips. We’ve put in lots of boating hours. We’ve swum in a local pond and in the backyard pools of various friends and relatives. There were birthday parties and graduation parties. We took a canal tour in Lowell. We took part in an all-you-can-eat ice cream tasting in Maine, and watched fireworks over the harbor on the Fourth of July. We attended a few minor league baseball games. We spent a day at the Museum of Science in Boston. We visited art exhibits in Lincoln, Concord and Lexington. And we spent a week exploring Disney World, with its myriad wonders and peculiarities, from Cinderella impersonators to roller coaster rides.

And all of it was a lot of fun. But so was yesterday. We were busy with various things indoors all morning; after lunch I told the kids it was imperative that we find some kind of outdoor activity that we all wanted to do. I suggested swimming at the nearby pond where we have a summer membership, or walking through the woods to the ice cream stand.

They preferred Frisbee. And badminton. And ladder ball. In the driveway.

So that was how we spent the afternoon. Not exotic fun, and not a lot of cultural immersion or exploration of nature involved. Just traditional backyard games, on one of the last days before summer vacation ends and school begins.

Yesterday afternoon probably won’t make it into any “What I did over my summer vacation” essays, other than this one. It was trivial. It was mundane.

But sometimes those are exactly the characteristics of summer fun. Yesterday, anyway. I’ll remember the afternoon of games in the yard, even if the kids might not. But my guess is that they’ll remember it too. Maybe not to brag to their friends about. But maybe when they’re my age and looking for something fun to do with their own children, they’ll remember Frisbee. And badminton. And ladder ball. And simple ways to have fun on an August afternoon.

Home from away

The greatest sense of anticipation I've ever felt about returning from a vacation was after our honeymoon. We had a fun and memorable visit to Margarita Island, but it was strictly a do-it-yourself kind of escape – we were staying at an isolated villa; research before we left had yielded very little information about the surrounding area; and since this was pre-Internet, we spent a large percentage of our time there scouring maps and trying to figure out what was worth seeing and how to get to it. By the time I buckled my seat belt for the flight home, all I was thinking about was the kitchen full of new appliances and accessories given to us as wedding gifts that I couldn't wait to start using.

I'm a little bit sorry to say that my sense of eager anticipation about returning home from travels has steadily decreased over the years. I still love my coffee grinder and my stand mixer, not to mention my home itself, and our community, and our many friends who live nearby, but it seems the more time passes, the more obligations await me upon the return from any trip: work assignments, kids' activities, household tasks.

Yes, I missed my own home-brewed coffee and sleeping in our own bed. I missed the dog too. But it was also so great to get away. A week at Disney World isn't everyone's dream, and truth be told, it isn't really Rick's and mine either: we did it because Holly insisted if we were going to plan a family vacation anyway, this was the destination she most wanted to experience. On some level, we adults went just to cross it off the list so that we could go somewhere else next time.

But these days there are always things I'm happy to escape from at home. No dishes to wash when we're staying at a resort. No activities to plan when you're at Disney World. No meals to host or events to organize. We were truly at leisure.

Now we've been back for twenty-four hours and it's re-entry time. I have existing assignments to finish and new ones to start. The kids and I need to go shopping for school supplies. They have doctor's appointments before school begins in two weeks, and I have at least three household projects I really wanted to complete before the summer was over.

Not surprisingly, it's good to go away and good in other ways to return. I still remember what it was like to walk into my childhood home after one of the month-long trips out west that we used to take every summer while I was growing up. In the August humidity, the house smelled dank, but there was something exciting about it as well: it was a smell reminding me that summer was ending and new things were about to begin.

Every house that has been closed up for a week in August has its own distinctive smell. Arriving home from the airport yesterday, we were quick to open windows and turn on fans, but I was still happy to take a moment to absorb the home-from-summer-vacation smell of the house. I may not be quite as excited about meal-planning or organizing the placemat drawer as I was when I returned from my honeymoon, but fall still means that new things are about to begin. I have about a week to re-organize, and then a new season gets under way. It's good to be home.

Take it easy

A friend of ours is vacationing for several weeks on an island this summer. Every few days, she emails me to update me on her trip. And she always begins with a description of how many hours she has spent working each day since the last update.

Understand, this isn’t “voluntourism.” Working isn’t an inherent part of the vacation scheme. She’s a freelance writer, like me, and could theoretically go away for a few weeks without sitting down at the desk at all. But it’s very important to her to impress upon me that that’s not the case. So she tells me how many hours she worked – and then she goes on to cover the various water sports and cultural excursions that the vacation has encompassed so far.

This has compelled me to contemplate why she feels the need to report on her work schedule. In his essay “The Busy Trap” in the New York Times last month, Tim Kreider implies that being busy has become a badge of honor, that we all have plenty of acquaintances –like the one I’m describing – who seem to believe that if they don’t remind us again and again of how busy they are, we might think that they’re, I don’t know, on vacation. Slacking, even.

I try hard to avoid this inclination in myself and not to talk about how much work I have in the abstract. I’m happy to tell anyone who is interested about specific assignments currently under way, either because they’re interesting or because they are particularly challenging, but either way, the discussion is about the specific assignment, not the mere fact that I have work to do.

So instead of referring to myself and my family as being busy, I now think of it as having a full day when all the activities are of our choosing -- whether that means recreational activities we specifically want to do or work we agreed to take on because it’s more desirable than other possible ways of making a living, even if we might rather not be working at all. I think of “busy” as meaning the sense of a treadmill: items on the schedule that are onerous, self-perpetuating and generally unfulfilling. Having a full day, on the other hand, means a lot of generally appealing options to pursue.

Thinking about this has underscored for me how much I admire those people who don't talk about being busy, and how wary I sometimes am of those who do. Several years ago, when I worked for a large international company, I was called to serve on an ad hoc committee with our CEO. “The first available meeting time she has is in six months,” the CEO’s assistant told the rest of us as we tried to set up a meeting. This gave me an uneasy feeling. Really? The CEO was busy for six months? So who was steering the ship?

Conversely, it reminds me of the first time I met the obstetrician who later delivered both my children. On my very first appointment with him, he did a physical exam and then told me to dress and meet him in his office. When I walked into his office five minutes later, he was reading the sports section of the daily paper. I loved the fact that he was so open about not being overscheduled that he was sitting there reading the paper. It assured me that he would have time for me – which as a new patient was just what I needed to know.

I began this summer with a commitment to ease up. It’s not that I actually planned to work less – as a freelancer, I need all the work I can get right now – I just didn’t want to think quite so much about work. I wanted to think about summertime.

Now, summer is about halfway over. If nothing else, I’ve thought a lot about the extent to which “busy” is a state of mind. I have a lot to do. But I’m not willing to use the “b” word because I’m happy to be doing all of it. Busy? Not really. Just happily occupied.

Keeping busy but feeling leisurely

Last week I wrote about wanting this summer to feel more like summers used to when I was in school. Rather than working daily and trying to fit in all the same things I try to fit in the rest of the year, I wanted somehow to have a real summer break – even while filing articles on deadline and maintaining the necessary workload that guarantees a paycheck.

Taking a moment to look back a week after making that resolution, I have to say it really seems to be working. At least in part. Not because I’ve been doing so much less in any particular area of my life but just because I’ve been thinking about work less and thinking about fun more. In the past week, we’ve taken part in our town’s Old Home Day celebration, attended the annual Crawfish Boil hosted by friends of ours, gone to a minor league baseball game, attended a niece’s graduation party, watched two of Tim’s baseball games, and spent 48 hours in Portland over the July 4th holiday. That’s way more fun than I fit into an ordinary work week, and I don’t feel one bit remiss in having done all of that.

I’ve also managed to keep up with work assignments, though in truth I have a little bit less work this summer than is typical.

And so far I’ve even kept the house up reasonably well and maintained a steady supply of groceries and homemade meals for my family.

So it actually doesn’t really feel like I’m kicking back or doing any less; it just feels like my attention has shifted. I’ve just made the fun parts more of a priority, while still fitting in work and domestic duties whenever time allows.

Tim Kreider’s well-circulated essay in last Sunday’s New York Times about what he calls “the ‘busy’ trap” was particularly timely, in my case, because it reminded me that being busy is often less about meeting obligations as about setting priorities. The past week has been busy because I didn’t want to cut back on work, housework, family obligations, or fun. I was busy because I was choosing to do all of that. But somehow it didn’t feel hectic, because I was doing what I wanted to do, both in terms of work and fun. It reminded me that when I fall into the trap that Kreider describes as being “crazy busy,” it’s usually because I’ve taken on obligations I don’t really want: community projects I feel a duty to help out with but am not adequately vested in the outcome of, or the rare work assignment that feels uninspiring and mismatched to my abilities.

So in reality, I might not find myself any less busy at all this summer from a time management perspective. Long uninterrupted days of lounging on the beach will probably not happen, at least not more than once or twice. But it’s all a matter of perspective. My time will probably continue to seem full, but I’ll keep sight of the fact that I’m doing just what I choose to do. And when that’s the case, I’m beginning to realize, being busy can seem like its own kind of leisure.

Slower summer? Less blogging!

Being self-employed and working from home if you have young children is wonderful at all times of year, but especially during the summer. Gone are the worries about 40-hour-a-week summertime childcare that plagued me back when I had a full-time job away from home. Now I’m available to spend my kids’ vacation time alongside them, and even better, they’re old enough to keep themselves busy for a few hours every morning so that I can get some work done before we head to the beach, the pond or the bike path.

In fact, at the ages of 9 and 13, they are even old enough that they generally sleep through some of those morning hours when I’m getting my writing done.

On the other hand, back when I was working in an office throughout the year, I had a couple of weeks every summer when I was officially on vacation. I said goodbye to my co-workers, closed up my laptop, walked away from my desk, and put all work responsibilities aside while I spent a week or two traveling with my family.

Now, there are no weeks throughout the entire year when I put all my work aside. I file stories on family trips and on holidays and every week throughout the summer. Self-employed writers are always on deadline for something, and having given up the paid vacations of my salaried life, I never feel comfortable ignoring all possible sources of income for a week or two.

So it’s a double-edged sword: I feel like I’m always partially on vacation, but I also feel like I’m never fully on vacation.

But this year I told myself that summer would be different. I really wanted to find a way to feel like the ten weeks of the kids’ summer break were a break for me as well. I resolved that this summer I would read more, spend less time on line, and even watch those past seasons of “Mad Men” that my husband has been urging me to catch up on for so long. I was determined that this summer would feel different from the rest of the year.

Yet I couldn’t figure out exactly how to do that. I need to keep up with my regular Globe assignments, which include two weekly deadlines and whatever other opportunities arise to write feature stories. I knew it didn’t make sense to turn down the occasional assignments I receive from other clients. I still need to prepare regular meals for my family, which means regular trips to the supermarket. And I definitely don’t want to slack off on the housekeeping any.

Then, late last week, I read this blog entry from my blogging colleague, Amy Suardi, author of the Frugal Mama blog. It turns out Amy has been thinking along very similar lines. She too wants to take it easier this summer. And she gave me an idea I hadn’t even thought of: stop writing so many blog entries.

Yes, I thought. That’s it. That’s something that would absolutely make it more of a summer break for me. Give up the pressure of writing three blog entries a week? That would be huge! And it would definitely buy me some time for reading. And for watching “Mad Men.”

But I was still a little bit conflicted. I’ve always been so diligent about maintaining my blog. Not because I think there are a lot of readers who really care whether or not I post three times a week without fail, but just because it’s an important writing exercise for me, and blogging generates ideas that I can then use in my newspaper column and other published essays. Moreover, I’ve noticed among other blogging colleagues that those who fade away seldom come back. Bloggers start out with intense enthusiasm….and then gradually drop off. I’ve maintained a regular schedule of posting for nearly three years now; I’m afraid to give myself permission to cut back.

And yet, I don’t want to give up any of my other work, or any household responsibilities. Blogging is the clear choice for how to relieve myself of some of my commitments this summer. And Amy Suardi has empowered me to believe it will be okay. I’ll post once a week for the nine weeks between now and Labor Day. I’ll return to three posts weekly as of Labor Day. Really, I will.

Frankly, I doubt anyone will notice. As long as I can reassure my conscience that this is just for summer, it will be fine. It will make my summer more relaxed, and I’m ready to give it a try. More New Yorker issues, more novels, and yes, more “Mad Men.” Sounds like a decent summer break plan to me.

Perfect timing: Heat and vacation

It seems so improbable, the timing of this week’s heat wave. The coincidence of weather and school scheduling just felt almost too perfect.

But there it was, as if orchestrated by a film director. Since June, the weather has been mild and pleasant, mostly dry, occasionally rainy, but never hot. Perfect weather for wrapping up the school year, I commented several times throughout the past three weeks: cool weather kept the kids as focused as they could be during the final days of the term, and made it easier for me to persist not only through work deadlines but through the kind of housekeeping tasks I wanted to accomplish before the kids were out of school.

That’s how it stayed right through Tuesday, their last day of the term. Then on Wednesday, the first day without school, temperatures in the 90s bloomed, and stayed the next day and into today. Ever since school vacation began, it’s been hot. Not just sunny and warm but heat-wave hot.

Which, as I say, seems almost improbably perfect. On Wednesday, Tim went to the beach with friends on a long-planned trip; they couldn’t have had a better day for it. I took Holly and her friend Samantha swimming at the pond where we have a summer membership, our first visit of the year. In the evening, we worked at our town’s Strawberry Festival. The air stayed hot well past sunset, and the same the following day.

Normally, temperatures in the 90s can be hard to take, especially day after day, and especially because New England heat tends to bring humidity along with it. We wilt; we feel unmotivated; we get cranky.

But not these past few days. Now it just seems so fitting: it’s the start of vacation, and everyone is enjoying the heat. Holly and I sat in the shade on the library lawn reading despite the pervasive warmth yesterday afternoon; Tim went to a friend’s pool and then played evening baseball. Last night, on the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year, the temperatures were still in the 80s as the light seeped out of the sky at nine o’clock.

Eventually we’ll tire of the heat, if it stays much longer. Tim will start to drag on the baseball field; I’ll have trouble finding motivation for my daily run. We might even get a little cranky. But at this point, it’s a perfect start to summer. I’m not sure whether to explain the timing as a theological or meteorological phenomenon. But for now, we’ll keep basking in it. School is over for the year, and if you venture just a step or two beyond the crisply air-conditioned house, there’s no question that it’s summer.

Farewell to another school year

Most years, the last day of school makes me feel nostalgic and sentimental. This year seemed different, though. My two predominant emotions as the kids wrapped up fourth and seventh grade, respectively, with a half-day of school and noon dismissal yesterday, were mild exhaustion and significant relief.

Oh, there was still a pang or two of nostalgia. The end of a year always means changes ahead. Next year they’ll both be on the middle school schedule, which begins and ends one hour earlier than elementary school classes even though all the grades share a campus, so I’ll no longer get to see the littlest kids when I pick Holly up at school, and I’ll no longer have the fun of hanging out with the parents of the younger children as we wait for our kids to be dismissed. And yes, I teared up watching the school buses drive out of the parking lot while all the teachers formed a line waving goodbye, just as I do every year.

But for the most part, I’m less ambivalent than usual about seeing a school year end. Yes, it was a great year for both of the kids: they had excellent teachers, challenging work and good friends. But it also seemed like I had more responsibilities, and I’m waving goodbye to those duties just as cheerfully as the teachers wave goodbye to the buses. Even walking into the main building to pick Holly up yesterday, I found myself thinking “There’s the auditorium where I volunteered for fourth grade band duty. There’s the cafeteria where I chaired the faculty appreciation luncheon. There’s the stage where I spent hours helping out at rehearsals and performances of the seventh grade play. There’s the library where I coordinated volunteer shifts all year.”

Every single one of these duties is something I offered to do. I wouldn’t have had to do any of them; my kids would have been just as welcome and just as well-treated at school had I not appeared on campus once all year. No, these were all my choices. But they added up faster than usual this year, it seemed.

So for the first time in my adult life, I felt a little like a kid again as the last day of school rolled around. Just as when I was a student myself, I was ready for the year to come to a close. I was happy with what had taken place throughout the year – some of which I could take credit for doing and some of which I could only be grateful to be part of – but I was ready for a break from it.

Now, I have that break, and so do my kids: eleven weeks until Labor Day and the start of a new school year. Eleven weeks should be plenty of time to replenish our mental energy and feel a little less worn down by it all. Even to analyze it is somewhat self-indulgent: being a self-employed professional who can participate in lots of volunteer efforts because she has the luxury of working from home and making her own hours is nothing to complain about. And these aren’t complaints: just an exclamation of relief.

School is over for the year. It’s summer, a time for taking a break from it all. Even Holly has that feeling: she announced during her shower last night that in honor of summer vacation, she might stop lining up her shampoo and conditioner bottles in the shower every night after she’s done bathing.

I have no problem with that. If it makes her feel like she’s taking a break from the norm, then she can scatter shampoo bottles as randomly as she wants. We can all use a little break, and now that summer is here, we can all try to find a way to take one.

Summer 2011 retrospective

It’s Labor Day, the unofficial end of summer and the incontrovertible end of vacation. School starts tomorrow morning; time to close out summer of 2011.

Somehow I didn’t expect to enjoy this summer as much as I did. For one thing, I was concerned that it was front-loaded: my big trip to Colorado happened at the end of June, before the kids were even done with school yet. Arriving home still days before July began, I was sure it would be all downhill from there.

But it wasn’t. Lots more good things happened, though none were perhaps as intellectually or artistically inspiring as the five days at the Aspen Summer Words writers’ conference. Still, the summer had all kinds of unexpected highlights. I won’t soon forget the Old Home Day pet contest, in which Holly answered questions about Belle and won a gift certificate for a free ice cream cone. Or the crawfish boil at the home of friends, at which tiny crawfish tried to escape their fate by scrabbling across the patio just inches from the cauldron into which they were about to be dropped. Or the afternoon my friend Jane invited us over for a swim; I told the kids we could go at three and stay for just an hour, but at six o’clock Jane ordered pizzas and by sunset we were still sitting out by the pool, gabbing and drinking cocktails.

Work went on, as it must; I spent weekday mornings on the screen porch drafting articles and conducting phone interviews. It’s among the best office views I’ve ever had, facing into a thick grove of oak trees that border the state park. Often I could hear voices drift through the woods as hikers made their way along the park trails. “Internship in Costa Rica….” Floated over one day. “…accept one more dinner invitation” another.

I tried jet-skiing for the first time, on Lake Chatauqua in western New York during our late August travels. While I’m glad to be able to say I’ve tried it, jet-skiing is definitely not something I’m in any hurry to repeat. As I see it, enjoying the outdoors should ideally involve either contemplative silence or some degree of physical exertion, or both, as well as a lot less fuel output than jet-skiing allows.

We had a handful of beach days: Crane’s Beach in early July, the air hot and still and the water icy cold; Goose Rocks Beach in Kennebunkport a week later, where in the course of three hours I caught up on the past year in my friend Courtney’s life while the kids jumped in the waves; Moody Beach in Wells, Maine, where my friend Renee and I power-walked for almost two hours along the shoreline; Higgins Beach in Scarborough earlier this weekend, where Tim and Holly and their friends built an enormous heap out of seaweed while my friend Nicole and I got completely caught up on the goings-on of each other’s summers.

We saw my older sister and her family for the first time in a year; they had spent the previous twelve months in Germany, and it was wonderful to catch up with all of them over several meals and drop-in visits during their two weeks in Carlisle. I met up for a lunch date with my friend Tracey, whom I hadn’t seen in nineteen years. Facebook brought us back in touch and her trip to Boston from Los Angeles gave us the chance for a get-together, and it was fascinating to hear what the past two decades had held for her.

For sports, the summer included boating, walking, biking, swimming and of course running. There were summer meals, outdoor concerts, baseball games, bonfires with s’mores. There was a heat wave with temperatures spiking well over one hundred, and a hurricane that turned out to be picturesque but not particularly scary.

The kids say they’re not ready to go back to school. While I don’t feel fully ready to transition into fall mode, I’m starting to feel a little bit ready for the seasons to change. Yesterday morning, for the first time all summer, I woke up and greeted the thought of my morning run with something decidedly less than enthusiasm. The humidity has started to be a real impediment to me when running, and I wasn’t looking forward to another draggy slog through the warm damp air. I went anyway, but just for two miles rather than the four or five that a Sunday morning usually merits.

Maybe in the fall, my enthusiasm for longer running routes will return. I know once school begins, I’ll be excited about all the new beginnings that September holds. But today is the last day of summer, even if not officially, and I’m still thinking about what a great summer it turned out to be.

Writing camp

Holly is so lucky. She gets to spend the whole week writing.

And just as my envy was starting to get the best of me this morning as I dropped her off at her writing day camp, I remembered something useful: I went to writing day camp this year also. I too got to spend whole days writing, back in late June when I attended the Aspen Writers' Foundation summer conference.

It may have had a fairly different format from Holly's day camp – she and her fellow campers lounge against pillows in a friend's comfortable basement as they write, whereas we sat on a sun-filled terrace overlooking the Roaring Fork River canyon with the Rocky Mountains in the distance – and different Big Names thrown around to draw in participants – ours had National Book Award winner Colum McCann as keynote speaker, but hers has one of Carlisle's most popular second grade teachers leading the way – but both of us opted to devote a week of our summer to writing this year. And it's a pretty cool thing for the two of us to have in common.

I have to admit, it's given me no end of delight to watch Holly head off to camp every morning this week, peacock blue notebook in hand, her head full of story ideas. Though there are so many interests I'd be happy to see her pursue, from sewing to graphic design to running to playing an instrument, it will surprise no one to hear that nothing strikes at my core quite the way seeing her want to write does.

Like most kids, she's always enjoyed writing, whether doing an in-class assignment or scribbling away in the back of the car as we do errands together, but this week is different. This is the first time she's had the chance to devote hours to her writing, day after day. And she is loving it. She walks around with a gleam in her eye, spouting plot twists and memories she wants to record. She asks me keenly contemplated questions: “Mommy, is it okay if I leave out the detail about Belle getting her nails clipped when I describe her visit to the vet, just to make the story move along faster?” She brims over with excitement when it's time to read me what she worked on each day.

Writing camp is an unusual option for a nine-year-old. Most of her friends are doing soccer camp this week, or drama camp, or music camp. We're lucky that one of Holly's friends wanted to find a writing camp strongly enough that the child's mother took it upon herself to set one up, with a talented grade school teacher willing to lead it.

Holly has just two days left. Thoughts about writing have filled her mind this week; I hope that continues. Maybe someday she and I will go to writing camp – whether the Aspen conference or somewhere else – together. But mostly, of course, I just hope she keeps writing. She definitely has the passion for it, and this week was a wonderful way to focus that energy. She will no doubt develop many various interests as she grows older, and I'm the first to admit there are more lucrative directions toward which her talents could potentially go. But I'm happy to see her writing this week. She loves her camp notebook, her pile of photographic writing cues, the shared excitement of the other girls in the group. I felt just the same way at the conference I attended earlier in the summer. There's no other feeling quite like it, and I'm so pleased it's something we're sharing.

Mid-August

Only in the past few years have I come to appreciate mid-August as one of the best times of the year.

Prior to this, mid-August connoted little more than heat and humidity to me. When I was a kid, it usually fell right when our vacation out west was all over, information about the new school year had arrived in the mail, and I was ready to move ahead into fall, not spend more time with summer details. And once I became a parent myself, it was often around mid-August that I'd start to feel completely out of resources as far as kiddie summer fun and just want to go lie on a beach somewhere all by myself with a good book.

More recently, though, it's been different. Mid-August, I've come to realize, falls squarely at the interesection of all the glory of summer and all the anticipation of fall. Yes, it can be hot and humid (though it is neither right now), but unlike the heat of July, there's no question that even if the weather is oppressive, it won't last much longer. And just as when anything good is starting to draw to a close you appreciate it more, by mid-August I'm keenly aware of all that I love about summer.

No super-early school-day mornings (I usually get up at 6:30 on weekdays mornings in the summer, which is a full hour and a quarter later than during the school year). Abundant fresh vegetables, even with New England's limited growing season: corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, berries, peaches. Warm water in ponds and lakes; temperatures that are not-quite-frigid in the ocean. Daylight that still lasts well into the evening, but leaves cool, soothing nights behind when it finally fades.

And although in June, standing at the precipice of another summer, I often fret about how the kids will fill their time and wonder if I've made enough plans for them, by mid-August I have nothing left to worry about on that count. I know they've both done an adequate amount of reading and writing and math to keep them ready for a new school year, and I still have a long list of ideas for summer excursions that we haven't done yet.

This year, the last few weeks of summer vacation hold additional pleasures: a creative writing program for Holly, and a little bit of vacation travel for all four of us. So I know it will go by quickly.

But fall is always an exciting time, with new school year energy for the kids and longer days for the kind of work I love, and less pressure to keep track of what everyone is doing and whether they are using their time well.

As the summer was beginning, I wrote in my journal that maybe my goal for this summer should be to spend less time worrying about how everyone in my family spends their time. It's true: I do put a lot of pressure on the kids to fit in outdoor recreation and exercise and reading and writing and time with friends and time alone and bathing and housework every day, and by extension, I put a lot of pressure on myself to ensure that all of those things happen. Maybe the answer is in fact for me to worry less about it.

But by mid-August, I'm done worrying about it, not because it has stopped mattering to me but just because I can see that everything worked out fine. By mid-August, I can simply savor what remains of the summer, as the days dwindle toward fall.