What I Want

It's been over one year since I have written anything here. I miss the corralling of thought this place gives me; instead I've been uttering in sometimes incoherent rants on twitter, occasionally Facebook. I am so completely immersed in politics that I've missed writing about the things that matter most to me: my children, my family, growing up, growing old. Rather I greet each day with news of what was said or done overnight, and each day I am genuinely horrified.

For two years (at least) I have been working on a collection of stories-those were supposed to be finished this summer. I've read about half as many books as usual. My morning quiet, extended this summer to at least three hours thanks to lazily sleeping children, has been consumed not with stories of faraway places but 140 character snippets of information, quite often leading me down a rabbit hole of hate and unkindness. I've given up far too much of my time, time that is really only mine for two months of the year.

What I've learned in allowing myself to be dragged into conversations that inevitably end in frustration is that there are people who still believe, soundly believe, that what is happening in the United States is a good thing, the right thing. There are those who believe that economic growth, attributed to this administration but factually part of an eight year increase, outweighs the other issues. There are people who believe that the other issues, as repugnant as I might find them, are the correct course for this country.

I do not.

My husband was asked if he had changed his mind regarding Trump given the economy. His response was brilliant:

Frankly, I find the question offensive, and the concept to be repugnant. To consider that I might be more OK with a racist, xenophobic, misogynistic, homophobic, unstable commander in chief , just because I would have a few more dollars in my pocket? Hell no. How selfish would that be? "Sorry Mary and Kate, your President says it's ok to grab women by the pussy, but we're richer now, so that makes up for it."

It was suggested to me that I watch inspirational videos on YouTube because in America everything is possible and that if you are offended by confederate statues or schools named after Civil War generals you should just move. In my life I know many people who don't have this option. Perhaps if we all watched inspirational videos on YouTube we'd find the way. I doubt it.

I want my life back.

I want to not worry everyday about what he might do or say, and who he might anger, or inspire. I want my children to grow up with a commander in chief who models dignity, kindness, intelligence, and compassion. I want to live in a country where hate is not fueled by fear, where hate is not tolerated, where hate is not the standard.

I want this to be over.

Allyson

Play. Run. Read. Repeat.

When we talk about summer reading at school I say this to the children, "Read books. Not all the time, not even most of the time. Play, run around, eat ice cream, scrape your knees, ride your bike, fall down, get back up and ride some more. Get sticky from watermelon and popsicles and strawberries. Go to the beach or the pool or both. Dig in the sand, dig in the dirt, find worms, don't eat them. Plant flowers, cut flowers, smell flowers. Chase fireflies. But when you have down time, and we all do, choose a book."

They have so many options: movies and video games, tablets and Iphones, but they also have books. There is time at the end of the day to tuck your scraped and dirty knees under you and lose yourself in a story, one you can hold and read and share.

When there is a choice, choose a book.

Summer Reading Favorites
Blueberries for Sal, McCloskey
Summer, Low
Everyone Can Learn to Ride a Bicycle, Raschka
Time of Wonder, McCloskey
What Do You Do With an Idea?, Yamada
Little Country Town, Southwell
Harry by the Sea, Zion
Beach, Cooper
Tar Beach, Ringgold
Henry Reed, Inc, Brown
Cornelia and the Audacios Escapades of the Somerset Sisters, Blume
From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Konigsburg
Junonia, Henkes
The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits and a Very Interesting Boy, Birdsall
Seaglass Summer, Banerjee

Summer by Definition

"How was your summer?"
"Lazy."

It's the best answer to the question most frequently asked in the first week of school.  Busy, exciting, exhausting, accomplished...none of these work quite as well as lazy.

We had company almost every weekend, doing what I had hoped we would do when we decided to decamp to Michigan for summer: relax, cook, laugh and enjoy the friends who feel like family and the family who feel like everything.

We picked blueberries, played at the beach, made s'mores, rode bicycles to the farm market and, in short, did everything we possibly could to cast ourselves in one of those glorious Pure Michigan television commercials.  There were none of the big moments that grow over time to make memories, just day after day of beautiful weather and lazy girls who rarely got out of bed before 11:00. 


Kate climbed a tree without screaming in terror the entire time, Mary plowed through four volumes of Harry Potter, I did not write a book, and Jack did not not take off a limb with his new hatchet. It seems we all accomplished just what we needed.

Summer afternoon... the two most beautiful words in the English language.  Henry James

It Just Takes One Bad Apple

Oh the last day of school, oh the celebration, free for the summer! It's a race to the neighborhood ice cream shop, a race we never win as my poor children must wait for their mother to gather her things, shut down her computer and pile books to sort through in September. And so we arrived to find at least thirty children on the sidewalk outside, eating ice cream and running joyously, celebrating the last glorious day of school.

A second grade boy saw us first, as we drove down the street across from the sidewalk. His friends joined in and then everyone, screaming and yelling, so excited to see the librarian coming to the ice cream store. I lowered all the windows to allow the voices to be heard, the unbridled screaming, "Ms. Lang! Ms. Lang! Look who is here, it's Ms. Lang!".

Never, not once in my entire life, have I been so well received. The cheers were deafening, the crowd growing, the children running along the sidewalk, following our car until I stopped at the red light. I waved, acknowledging my fans, those same children who only one week ago scowled at me when I asked them to be quiet in the library. My own children were shocked to near silence in the backseat, "Um, Mom, they really like you", said Mary, seeing her now famous mother in a whole new light. For this brief and shining moment I was the queen of the Last Day of School parade.

A car pulled up next to me, having just turned onto the street. The old man stopped and rolled down his window, his wife in the next seat. "Are you a teacher?" asked the old man, surely stopping to thank me for another wonderful school year, another glorious nine months of learning and growing.

Rather than bore this kind man with the details of my specific role I nodded and smiled, "yes, yes I am!". He turned to his wife, nodded and then smiled at me, "well then you make too much money, driving that expensive car", and he grunted, laughed, and sped away.

There's one in every crowd.

Kate and Mary Read

It will be the summer of reading. Last summer it was bicycles, riding for hours on end for the first time without the aid of additional wheels (quiet, they are city children, it took a bit longer), and the summer before that, the summer of France, on their first trip to one of my favorite countries. But this year, in what could have been the summer of soccer (although, now wrapped, their enchantment with the World Cup was too fleeting to define an entire summer), it is the summer of reading. It's nothing new, they have always been fond of books and stories but this year their lazy selves are lolling in bed some days until 11:00, waking and reading for hours before dragging themselves downstairs in search of food. They are building forts and finding nooks to house their afternoon habit; dirt and sand covered children crawling into the corners of our home, books in hand, to pick up where they left off that morning.

We have no complaints.

When they were born my cousin gave me a book, a big thick book, called "How to Raise Readers" or something like that. I thought this was genius and planned on reading it cover to cover as soon as I found time. I suspect it is still in the exact place on the shelf where I put it almost ten years ago, having never found the time to read about reading, choosing rather to actually just read. This lackadaisical approach seems to have worked.

We read together every night, the three of us. Last night we finished the first in The Penderwicks series, a book we all loved so much so that the next two books have just been ordered from my favorite used book seller. The girls, on their own, just finished Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, as did I, and we will all write reviews next week for From Left to Write, celebrating the 50th anniversary of this really terrific book. And now they will have their own space, NorthSideFour: Kate and Mary Read, because all this reading begets writing, and I'm most curious as to what they have to say. Nose buried in books, I haven't talked to them in days.

Like Sand Through the Hour Glass

The First Day of Kindergarten

"This will fly by", said my friend when Mary and Kate started kindergarten. "Hold on to your seat", they said, as the first day became the first month and then, before I knew it, kindergarten was over.

We just wrapped the final day of fourth grade. The school year, with it's rigid schedule, bounds us so tightly in our collective race to the finish line that, in our effort to get through to the next vacation day, we do miss the day to day joy of dragging our children out of bed at 6:00 A.M.

We start out with the best intentions. September lunches are packed the night before and include sushi, fried rice and black bean wraps. By May my children are eating snack pack applesauce, still frozen edamame and at least twice per week, the cheese lunch box from Starbucks. The clothes that fit, and matched, at the beginning of the year stretch to cover growing bodies in June. At the end of this annual race I'm happy to get them out the door in clothes that are clean: horizontal stripes on top, vertical stripes on the bottom but at least they are Downy fresh.

"How many days until summer?", not because we don't like school but because we are exhausted and deeply moved by the idea of sleeping until something exotic like say, 7:00 A.M.

Kindergarten just became the summer before fifth grade and the mountain of discarded days, those piled up in the race to finish math homework I scarcely understand before eating a hastily created dinner, showering and getting to bed at a time that will at least allow enough sleep so as to facilitate the impending early morning wake up, those days have been carelessly tossed aside in an effort to get through to the next. And the problem with this kind of daily sprint is that you do tend to miss out on the whole of days moving forward, taking us from one grade to the next. You see I don't actually know when the math homework moved from identifying the shape, which I did understand without question, to computing the area of complex three dimensional figures, which I absolutely do not. I wish I did.

The Last Day of Fourth Grade

My concern, because it is not that I like my soon to be fifth grade children any less than I liked my soon to be kindergarten children, is that these days continue to grow behind us as we race to a time when the girls move from my daily life to their daily life. And these days so casually cast aside in an effort to get, clean and well fed, to the next make up the time warp that is hurling us at lightning speed to a time without childhood. Which I believe is some sort of math problem but I can't be certain.

It's time to dig in and enjoy the slow day to day of summer, where being well fed means eating a few ripe strawberries after your second ear of corn on the cob and where math problems are created while lying in the grass looking at starts in the sky. These we remember, and savor, even as they move us from one day to the next.

Au Revoir Summer

All spring I waited, counted the weeks until I could buy a full gallon of milk at the small town market, one that would be tippled for more than a two day weekend, one that would last for an entire week, or longer. That time has come and gone, summer is officially kaput.

To ease the transition, today was cooler than any day last week, clear and blue and beautiful but definitely crispy. That it warms up this week matters not at all, the official last day of summer reminded us all why we love the autumn months, although not quite as much as summer.

And what a summer, the highlight being the removal (finally) of the training wheels (theirs, not mine). At eight my urban children, with very little space to bike ride, found the wide open spaces of a small town and decided, after much debate, to free themselves of the clickety clack of training wheels. I held on, I let go, and they were off. Sunday night, just after sunset, they rode with us the four blocks to the beach, on only two wheels (each), the cap to a much accomplished summer.

They swam to the buoy, picked blueberries, ate ice cream, and suffered from assorted scraped knees, elbows and chins. Kate got stung by a bee, five times, and survived (she was much braver than her mother). We watched movies on rainy nights, learned to play gin rummy, and began the arduous process of building a doll house.

My old leather calendar stayed in my bag and the computer came out only after bedtime, and only for writing. I cut my hair, got too much sun on my nose and loved every minute of living without a schedule.

We're back, a very long and traffic congested car trip later, but we're back. As I brushed Mary's shower tangled hair before bed, police sirens screamed outside the bathroom window. Dinner arrived in 45 minutes, noodles from the Thai place down the street, and the grocery man comes tomorrow. Jack's busy two nights this week, I go back to work tomorrow, and, even though the girls are one week into fourth grade, summer didn't seem officially over until tonight.

In no time we'll be back savoring everything we love about the city but for now, for one last minute, I'm allowing myself to miss the sound of quiet on the small town back porch and the incessant chirping of the cicadas.

Au revoir.

Catch the Door Before it Closes

I've been keeping pretty close tabs on things. All of those people who said that time flies have nothing on me, I'm watching it happen. And I am doing my very best to suck every bit of life out of every minute of every day because I know, and it bangs away in my head every time my mind wanders, that this is THE summer after third grade. When they look back at pictures they will say things like "oh Mary, that was the summer after third grade, when you fell out of the tree by the coffee shop" or "Kate! Look at this picture of your knees! Mom, was that the day she learned to finally ride her bike?". Yes, I am painfully aware that the door on this summer is about to close, a big loud slam that is set to happen in three days. I'm on top of it. I think.

There are things that I like better about children who are eight and not three. We do not have to assess their level of exhaustion before deciding to eat in a restaurant. Unless it's way, way past bedtime, they can swing it. We can stay up to watch fireworks, catch fireflies, and eat s'mores. They sleep in, current wake up time is between 9:30 and 10:00 (which is going to be a bear of a reversal once this summer door closes). They can pour themselves a glass of lemonade, after, of course, asking if they may. We can take a two hour car trip without an arsenal of activities; for two glorious hours they are actually somewhat happy talking to me (recent topics of conversation include: what exactly is in strawberry jam? and why is it called jam? what does it mean to sue someone and why does everyone sue McDonalds? is it because they have bad food? why don't boys have boobies? how long until the new prince will be king? and why isn't the queen's husband a king?). Distinct advantages to being eight, and I appreciate every one of them. However, eight is just a stop on the road to summers spent working and sweating and cursing the humidity for creating a droopy mess out of a once crisp linen blouse, and that I'm not ready to accept.

As much as she hates it, Mary's somewhat diminutive size means that I can still scoop her up and carry her when one of her summer battle wounds is proving too much for the last block on a long walk home. She fits quite nicely on my back, at least for one block, and I love that she still finds that space a safe spot to shrug off the responsibilities that come with her eight years. Her sister, now much too tall for me to carry, is perfectly content climbing into our bed and reading with me for hours. She brings her bear and senator and rainy Sunday mornings are the best part of my week. Because even though they are eight and much too rapidly picking up the this and that's which will lead us to the teen years, they still fit snuggly in my world, and they still like it here.

We have three days before we return to a schedule that requires an alarm clock and a strict adherence to bed times. A Monday to Friday gig that means less spontaneity, more responsibility and quite often a scramble for clean clothes. We're going to make the most of these three days, I'm watching, I see the time flying by but we are loving every bit of it. It's been a glorious summer, don't let the door hit you as it closes.

Leave Your (Sandy) Shoes at the Door

We stopped at the end of the driveway.

 "All right, what's the plan once we get to the back door?"

"Mom", elongated, much more like "Mooooahmmm", in two exasperated sighs.

We walked to the back door where, because they are so easy to annoy, I ran through the basic drill, just as a refresher.

"Kick off your shoes outside, hang your towels on the chairs on the deck, run upstairs to rinse off, one in the shower and one in the tub, and then throw your suits down to me, got it?".

Two sandy smiling faces nodded at me, yes, we know they said.

I unlocked the door and stepped inside, followed immediately by two sandal wearing, towel wrapped wet sandy bodies.

"What are you doing?"

They looked at me as if I was crazy.

To be clear, I'm not unreasonable. I know that this was the first trip to the beach this summer, a place they had not been in at least 9 months. I also know that 9 months prior they did this exact thing no less than thirty times so I thought that perhaps it was still in there, this leave your sand at the door routine that we have been perfecting for 8 years.

"We just discussed this, you were going to leave your sandals outside? Anyone?"

Nothing but blank stares. They haven't been to school since Friday, clearly the summer brain drain was in full effect. They had forgotten everything they had learned last summer, or 2 minutes prior.

Kate began to nod, "oh, you wanted us to leave our sandals outside? Oh...". She opened the back door, flung her sandals into the yard, not actually stepping outside herself, and came back in, smiling like the class valedictorian. Mary, not one to be left out, followed along.

"Now what do you think you need to do?"

Another round of confused stares, leading me to believe that catching a flight to Paris might seem just as logical as taking off your wet bathing suits. Mary, our first born, our leader, stepped up, "I know Mom, put on pajamas".

"Yes, correct, eventually, but look around. You are standing here in wet bathing suits, wrapped in wet beach towels. What steps might you take first?", I asked, as if this was not in any way a rhetorical question.

Mary hit the buzzer first once again, this time stripping completely in the kitchen, directly in front of the open back door.

Kate, taking full advantage of a few extra IQ points, shook her head, "um, I don't think so Mary, you are naked!". This immediately devolved into wild fits of laughter, as if they had never seen one another naked before. I opened the refrigerator and helped myself to a Summer Shandy, having no such problems recalling my summer routine.

Mary was now jumping around the room, shaking sand from every bit of her naked body as her sister stood, still wrapped in her towel, watching this side show like a shivering voyeur at a convention for the confused.

"MOM! What do I do NOW?" screamed the naked child.

"Well Mary here's what I need you to do. Hop on your bike and ride into town for a pizza, can you carry a pizza in your basket?

She rolled her eyes at me, "MOM! I am naked!".

Clearly disgusted with me and my lack of specific direction, she marched upstairs, taking matters into her own hands.

Kate watched her go, looked at me, and then walked outside to hang her towel on a deck chair. I was encouraged, hopeful.

"Now what do I do Mom?"

Oh summer, I've missed you.

Two in Two, September 2011

Re-posted from this same time last year, when I was again mourning the loss of summer and convincing myself that a return to school was a good thing.

Tuesday my kindergartners started second grade. This came as quite a shock to me. As usual I was the blubbering parent on the playground, long after the last child made the first day of school march into the building. Jack is patient, he guides me away from the school as someone yells, "not again! Don't you work here?", as I sniffle and shuffle away.

The truth is that I love school. I love paper and pencils and backpacks and books. I love the smells and the people and even sometimes the learning. School has become, in our two years there, our community and I am happy to be back with the teachers and staff who are now my co-workers and who color the bulk of my weekday life. I am happy to be back in the library, back with the students, back in the meetings and back at the neighborhood Starbucks, running into my favorite parents. This morning's coffee conversation topics included circumcision, Orthodox Jews, lollipops and Christian Science; not the stuff of my regular summer repertoire.

It surprises me, the need for a calendar again is compelling, when one week ago I would have said I could live the rest of my life on a lazy summer schedule. I enjoy pulling out a sweater each morning and I'm considering stashing my favorite canvas bag en lieu of a big leather tote.

This year the bandage was ripped off; the last few weeks of summer were spent roaming around the east coast, putting a halt to my regularly scheduled mantra of savoring each and every dwindling moment of summer. We came home, they went to school, it was that easy.

Children bring me back to the idea that summer is the very best time to do as much of nothing as possible. They leave seashells and sand in my bag and wet bathing suits on the floor. They are frequently sticky, coated with a thin layer of ice cream drips, and often dirty. They spend three months smelling of Coppertone and bug spray. A wedge of watermelon after dinner ranks amongst the world's greatest treasures and capturing a firefly before bed is the ultimate cap to a perfect lazy day.

The end of summer signals not just the end of bug bites and corn on the cob but also a marked notch in the forever enabled passage of time that leads, eventually, to growing up. As it turns out, growing up has not been all bad, especially when children remind me just how great it is to be a kid.

Back to the Previously Scheduled Order

Order has been restored.

The alarm went off as planned, everyone up and going, breakfast eaten, lunches made, suitable clothing attired, four shoes located and on the feet, out the door at a reasonable time, taxi available, on time arrival for a very early day, and we're off, welcome to third grade.

Mary, who was a bit nervous for the start of such a monumental year, hit the playground and ran, leaving me, and my camera, on the sidewalk. Kate was not far behind. For now the fourth year, I cried on the first day of school. The same wonderful teacher, the one who comforted me on the first day of kindergarten, who promised me that they would take very good care of them, hugged me today, knowing that my unstable self needed that extra reassurance that yes, everything would be all right. Of course now they have tackled the big things. They both know where the bathroom is, and how to buy milk at lunch. They know where to hang their backpack and how to find their seat in their new classroom. But the return to school means a return to a calendar and structure. A return to a rigid schedule that leaves little to no time for play and silliness during the week. Stopping for ice cream on the walk home from the dinner is now a weekend only event, and afternoons are spent doing homework, rather than chasing Eleanor Roosevelt through the park.

My days are all my own, to do with as I please.

 The problem is, I don't really like order, and I've never been very good with a schedule.

 I do miss the clutter of summer.

Summer Break For Everyone

 It's summer, but only for a finite time. Our end date is only about 6 weeks away and given that I live all year for these precious weeks, I intend to enjoy them as best I can. Rather than days spent in a coffee shop writing, I opt for days spent at the beach, or hours flipping through the current Food and Wine while Mary and Kate splash every bit of water out of their blow up pool. My responsibilities are on summer vacation as well (you should see the laundry room) and that is just fine with me.

My notebooks are full, I keep scribbling away, but evenings that used to be quiet writing time are now spent in the park listening to music or at the harbor watching an outdoor movie, or sometimes reading on the front porch, when it's not 97 degrees outside. I'm on summer break, right along with my children who squeeze every bit of summer out of their days. I'd hate to miss that.

Because Mary and Kate Get It

Two nights ago, on our evening walk, Eleanor Roosevelt and I spotted the first fireflies of the summer. Eleanor barely noticed. She continued on with her incessant sniffing of the sidewalk while I followed the path of the flying bug, hoping to see another shot of light before we made it home. The first firefly is an announcement of the arrival of summer, and that it happened in the last week of school made it even more remarkable. Eleanor was not at all excited and treated the whole monumental occasion as very everyday, as if she happens upon the first fireflies of the season nightly. I could not wait to get home and tell the girls.


When Jack and I got married, children were an understanding but not a great plan. They arrived at about the time we would have liked, as part of the natural progression of marriage. That I can recall, no one has ever said to me, without sarcasm, "why did you have children?", or if they did, I didn't have a good answer. It wasn't part of a grand scheme to leave a bit of us on the planet; we had no need to produce an heir, we have no land that needs farming nor business that needs a plan of succession. We had children because we wanted to, without one truly tangible reason, and very little planning.

Children are a great deal of work. They require me to be on my best behavior as often as I possibly can. They expect more from me than anyone ever has, and make me want to be the person that can live up to those expectations. They need me to cook their food and tell them when to go to bed, to laugh at their jokes and make sure their feet are clean. It's a commitment, one that means I skip my favorite art fair, on a beautiful sunny Chicago day, to stay home and rub the back of a feverish and crying child.

But Mary and Kate appreciate fireflies, and that's reason enough for me.

Two in Two

Tuesday my kindergartners started second grade. This came as quite a shock to me. As usual I was the blubbering parent on the playground, long after the last child made the first day of school march into the building. Jack is patient, he guides me away from the school as someone yells, "not again! Don't you work here?", as I sniffle and shuffle away.

The truth is that I love school. I love paper and pencils and backpacks and books. I love the smells and the people and even sometimes the learning. School has become, in our two years there, our community and I am happy to be back with the teachers and staff who are now my co-workers and who color the bulk of my weekday life. I am happy to be back in the library, back with the students, back in the meetings and back at the neighborhood Starbucks, running into my favorite parents. This morning's coffee conversation topics included circumcision, Orthodox Jews, lollipops and Christian Science; not the stuff of my regular summer repertoire.

It surprises me, the need for a calendar again is compelling, when one week ago I would have said I could live the rest of my life on a lazy summer schedule. I enjoy pulling out a sweater each morning and I'm considering stashing my favorite canvas bag en lieu of a big leather tote.

This year the bandage was ripped off; the last few weeks of summer were spent roaming around the east coast, putting a halt to my regularly scheduled mantra of savoring each and every dwindling moment of summer. We came home, they went to school, it was that easy.

Children bring me back to the idea that summer is the very best time to do as much of nothing as possible. They leave seashells and sand in my bag and wet bathing suits on the floor. They are frequently sticky, coated with a thin layer of ice cream drips, and often dirty. They spend three months smelling of Coppertone and bug spray. A wedge of watermelon after dinner ranks amongst the world's greatest treasures and capturing a firefly before bed is the ultimate cap to a perfect lazy day.

The end of summer signals not just the end of bug bites and corn on the cob but also a marked notch in the forever enabled passage of time that leads, eventually, to growing up. As it turns out, growing up has not been all bad, especially when children remind me just how great it is to be a kid.


We'll miss you summer, see you next year.

Camp Sunshine

More than 20 years later I have no idea where they came from, or who bought them, or where mine might be right now. They were bright yellow with a white crest on the upper left side, the silhouettes of small children and birds frolicking within, and underneath, Camp Sunshine.

At 16 it seemed perfectly logical to define your peer group with matching shirts, opting for camaraderie over snappy high school fashion. When everyone else was wearing neon colored, and loosely knit, v-neck sweaters with platform shoes, we wore Camp Sunshine t-shirts and fishing hats. Today it's not often that my friends and I wear matching clothes, not intentionally. Maybe things would be different if I thought I could go back to camp.

We knew nothing of the true identity of Camp Sunshine; it sounded like a cheery place, and we were quite happy entertaining ideas and creating our own scenarios: an isolated refuge for aging Bingo addicts or a woody hideout for former, and unaccomplished, theatre students.

Now I tend to think Camp Sunshine might look just like this:


There's Peter, a former yellow shirt counselor, his husband Brian, their twins Hudson and Mercer, Hudson and Mercer's mom (minus her girlfriend), a couple of nannies, four other dads, a pair of moms and six, in total, happy, lucky and loved children.

Camp Sunshine, as it turns out, looks nothing like what we envisioned, and everything like a happy week at the beach, with people you love, should. Time to dig out that bright yellow t- shirt, I think I'd like to run the tennis program at this camp next summer.

A Long Wave Goodbye

For the first time in months the big old tray that carries dinner to the front porch sat unused while the girls set the table in the dining room. Mary was sent to the back deck for rosemary, not basil. And dinner was served in a bowl, potato soup, with nary a tomato in sight. It happens just that fast.

My mother, a morose sort who fancies herself a deep and insightful thinker, has always said of September, yuck. It's death to me, or something along those lines, meaning that she can't see the apple forest for the dead trees. She has been known to throw open the back door on Columbus Day, wave her arms wildly, and scream "you are dead to me". Generally the trees ignore her, as do I. September is crisp and clear and full of apples and sweaters and football. And now, for the first time in years, September is back to school.

Not that I was ready, saying goodbye is not one of my strengths, in fact it falls far onto the fault side. The last day of vacation, the last day of Christmas break, the last blueberry, I'm morose in my own way. And as much as it pains me (and it really does, season changes wreak havoc on old creaky joints now) to wave goodbye to the beach, I jump headfirst into school, once I get past the actual march into the building on the first day. To note, I cried like it was kindergarten, and moped around all day waiting for the madness to come home.

The madness came home a little more tame. Mary, previously unable to sit still for more than 3 minutes, sat in the kitchen and read for almost 2 hours. Kate worked diligently on first day home work, writing sentences from words missed on a Day One spelling test. For the first time they are apart, in two different rooms on two different floors, and, while they were not initially thrilled with the idea, absence does seem to make the heart grow fonder. They will find their way, individually now, although they did insist on dressing identically on the first day, so that "they would know we were twins".

Waving goodbye to the lazy ways of summer is hard, those long and order free days with little to do and no time frame to do it in are difficult to resist. But vacations end, structure is good, and apple pie is better. Sweaters, jackets and backpacks are crowding the beach towels in the front closet, new shoes have replaced the sandals, the linen is ready to be packed away. September is not dead to me, it's a new beginning, a chance to shed the old and work on the new, even if it's in different rooms with different teachers. Let the learning begin!

Building A Summer

Mary and Kate are playing Famous Architects. It's a new game, surely borne out of recently spending four days in Michigan with four architects. They've got a wine box, tons of construction paper, a soon to be depleted glue stick, colored pencils and Velcro hair rollers, dug out from the depths of the bathroom cabinet. A city is rising before me on the carpet outside their playroom.

It's a necessary reminder, that some of the best days are spent playing at home with supplies on hand. In these last few weeks before school begins, I am hurriedly checking items off my summer to do list. Yesterday morning was spent at the History Museum where we explored freedom in Chicago, wedding traditions, Chinatown and Chicago hot dog making. Monday we were at a water playground trying to escape the mad Midwestern heat. Tomorrow there is a program at the local library, Friday we've got plans to go to the beach.

As adamant as I am about lazy summers, I panic when I realize that lazy summers, on our current schedule, are only about 10 weeks long, and we've got less than four weeks to go before autumn hits and school begins. There are still things on my list to cross off: The Children's Museum, open symphony rehearsals, baseball, miniature golf, napping. We'll never get it all in, we never do. And knowing there are only 11 more summers before summer becomes simply a season characterized by heat and humidity, not a wonderful respite from school and schedules and alarm clocks, provides me little comfort.

The talk on the playground at the end of the school year was summer camp. I politely abstained. Summer camp when I was a kid meant packing your bags and heading off to Colorado or Minnesota for three weeks, not a daily 9:00 am excursion to the park, or nature center, or art museum. Too much like school, to scheduled, too much of what I wanted summer not to be, I passed on summer camp, realizing that in choosing not to work, I have chosen to spend my days with the girls, accepting the periodic insanity directly related to that decision.


Maybe sanity is overrated. Maybe I only have, relatively speaking, a short time to spend my Friday afternoons at the beach with two small but rapidly growing beach bums. Sand castles one day, wine bottle box cities the next, lazy summer afternoons building cities and memories, just what I really want to cross off that to do list.

My Sister is a Worm Collector

"Dad! Look, look at all these worms!", and even I squirmed, worms not usually bothersome but a handful of five or more wriggly creatures, ick. She dropped them into a pile in the front yard, rubbed her filthy muddy hands all over the front of her pink flowered sundress and took off to find more, for her always expanding worm collection. The large pink bow in her hair now a little askew, having been pushed back repeatedly by the small wormy hand.

Her sister, dressed in long khaki shorts, a navy blue t-shirt and a baseball cap, recoiled in terror. The very idea of one worm, much less an overflowing handful, sent her racing to the certain safety of the front porch, away from the dirt and insect infested yard. She remained in that safe spot for the better part of the afternoon, watching her sister run from worm pile to dig site and back again.

My Dog is a Plumber

My dog is a plumber. He must be a boy,
Although I must tell you his favorite toy
Is a little play stove with pans and with pots,
Which he really must like, 'cause he plays with it lots,
So perhaps he's a girl -- which kind of makes sense,
Since he can't throw a ball and he can't climb a fence,
But neither can dad -- and I know he's a man,
And mom is a woman and she drives a van.
Maybe the problem is in trying to tell
Just what someone is by what she does well?

-Dan Greenburg

How Many More Days?

Twice this past week I forgot to make lunches. Wednesday morning, at 7:30, as I stood in robe and towel wrapped head, Jack, valedictorian of the Boy Scout preparedness school, looked at me and said, "lunches?".

Our out the door on time departure is 7:45; 7:50 if we race, drive with wild abandon and accept that the dash into school will happen as the second bell sounds. At 7:30 the lunch boxes sat empty and I, still dripping, was lost as to how they got that way.

At 6:00 last night, elbow deep into a flower pot, the little girls covered in dirt, the second layer firmly adhered by the sticky remains of a strawberry fruit pop, I suddenly realized that no homework had been done, not one page. No dinner prepared, no baths taken, no simple addition completed, we were one hour away from bed time, a time far too early but dictated by the horrific hour we awake each day to begin the race to school, and still completely engaged in the work of summer. As with the weather, our priorities had shifted overnight, from sight words and fractions to sunflowers and popsicles.

It's warm and sunny. It was 91 degrees in Chicago yesterday, only beaten in the mercury by the consistently tropical Minneapolis. An aberration I know but one we embrace. The girls are wearing shorts and sundresses, the dog is panting, Jack is griping about the heat and we are ready for summer. After nine months, wonderful months of paper and paint, letters and numbers, music and dance, it's time for sand and sunblock.

The race to the end of the hall is as clear to me now as it was thirty years ago. Bag stuffed with every precious work I spent the year creating, I ran at the final bell to sunshine and swimming pools, the last few weeks of being trapped in a classroom absolute torture. The long windows on the side of the building opened to allow in a stifling warm breeze, and with it, the sound of the custodian mowing and the smell of freshly cut grass. From the inside looking out summer seemed like years away, and then it magically appeared and my days were spent not at a desk but immersed in whatever water I could find.Summer, when I was five, went on forever, in fact almost all my days were summer, with just a few weeks of cold thrown in to celebrate Christmas. Lemonade stands with Stephanie, gymnastic shows with Mary and Josie, hours spent in the church parking lot learning to ride my new bike, afternoons saddled behind Dad on his horse, and days upon days of doing nothing, my summer lasted forever. As it should, because you only have one summer to spend being five, best to make the most of it.

Corn Toast

The last of the Michigan corn was gone yesterday, gobbled by two young corn eaters, faces smeared with all the sweet goodness of summer's best treat. My grandfather ate corn with a similar gusto, kernels left on his tie, cheeks and occasionally found later in his hair, the universal corn glue, butter, responsible for the leftover treasures. Corn is tossed into salad, mixed with pasta and pureed into soup, but it's really best just off the cob, with butter and salt, recently plucked from Charlie Brown's corn patch in Michigan. It's true, his name is really Charlie Brown and the girls delight in eating Charlie Brown's corn, as if that somehow makes it even better.

Of course the last of the corn is always noted, in a melancholy voice, by the family biographer. As if we will never again have corn I toast the end of summer, waving my butter covered stalk in the air, smiling through my tears as I struggle to find the right words, looking to the heavens for inspiration, as the children and Jack bravely move on, teeth first, into the yellow sweetness.

We bought six ears of corn at the farmer's market today, from a Michigan farmer, presumably not named Charlie Brown (although I did not actually ask). I'm certain this is fine corn although, as evidenced by the remaining five pounds of blueberries in the refrigerator, next to the bag of cherries, the peaches, the nectarines and the green beans (tomatoes always left on the windowsill), things really do taste better when we buy them from cartoon characters in Michigan.

Tonight's corn was steamed, stripped from the cob and tossed with pasta, tomatoes, mint, basil, chives, a little lemon juice and olive oil. Summer, it just can't last long enough.