Summer diet of pursuits and vegging out
Summer is well underway, but this year things are a bit different. My kids are at an awkward age, and not just because Mustafa is growing out of pants almost as soon as I bring them home from the store. My kids are older, and it’s getting more difficult to plan around them … I mean, plan for them.
In the past, I would do what most parents do in the summer: make a list of activities, camps and play dates, and begin scheduling.
This year, Mustafa is 13, Ibrahim is 10, and their plans for the summer include forming a permanent attachment to the basement sofa, and plotting Fortnite missions (I still really don’t get that game) with their friends.
After an academically rigorous year filled with into-thewee-hours homework, Mustafa just wants to chill, bicker with his brother and eat pizza.
As a teacher, I have enormous summer privilege, and they know it. I don’t have to enrol them in summer camp. Except that actually, I really, really do.
I’m not good with vast stretches of time left unfilled. Maybe this is because of my teacher training. Everything needs to be planned in advance, and then further broken down into weekly plans, daily plans, maybe even hourly plans.
Their idea of a perfect summer is a blank canvas. Mine looks more like a neatly ruled and columned ledger.
“What are your goals for the summer, Mustafa?” I asked months ago.
My newly-minted teenager shrugged. He’s been doing this a lot lately, even though I keep reminding him that shrugging does not constitute a conversation. I asked Ibrahim.
“What do you want to do in the summer, Ibrahim?”
My 10-year-old’s eyes were glued to his Nintendo Switch. “Yah,” he answered me.
Sigh. It was so easy when they were younger and didn’t know they could have opinions about things. I would just plunk them into the camp that was the most convenient for me in terms of distance and cost, and just like that, summer was planned. Now that they are getting older, the options are fewer and more specialized. Plus, they have opinions about how they want to spend their time.
“I’ll only go to camp if a friend goes with me,” Ibrahim said nonchalantly.
“My goal for summer is to sleep,” Mustafa added.
Double sigh. The bigger the kid, the bigger the problems. Something no one bothered to tell me when I had howling toddlers gripping my legs.
Growing up, my parents never asked me what I wanted to do in the summer. My mother was home, so the plan was always to sleep in, go to the library, hang out with friends and watch too much TV. The only summer camp I attended was at the mosque, and it was fun because my friends were there.
Part of me wants my kids to have the same lazy summer experience. “They have the rest of their lives to work” a voice says. “These are the moments that make a childhood!”
Another part of me worries about the summer slide, and high school looming for Mustafa, which means competition for volunteer and intern positions. Maybe he should work on his resume and look for a job. It’s never to early to start.
“I want to learn how to code,” Mustafa announced in the last week of June.
“I want to go to anime camp,” Ibrahim chimed in.
I try to muffle my scream. Don’t they know programs book up in the winter?
Still, I try my best. I print out a calendar, because I’m oldschool and need to see it on paper, and start scheduling. Two weeks of camp. Softball, swimming, piano. A really long sleepover at Nani and Nana’s house. A trip over the long weekend. A few weeks to vegetate, be underfoot, complain about being bored, and ask me what’s for lunch. I get to the end of the summer calendar and realize, as I do every summer, that it will be all right.
And it is. The weather is hot, the days are long, the weeks are short. My kids play outside, get tanned, catch up on sleep and get on each other’s nerves. It is glorious, and it will all be over too soon.