I hear a voice this time of year:
“It can’t be back-to-school time. We’re not ready!”
“There’s so much more we wanted to do this summer.”
“We didn’t get to have enough fun together in the past three months.”
I expected it to be the voices of my daughters, but no, they’re inside my head. For the first time I can remember, I’m not ready for my kids to go back to school yet.
Don’t get me wrong, they’re driving me crazy when I get home from work each night. They’re full of energy, when I am not. They’ve spent their days lazing around doing whatever they wanted, so they want fun and excitement when my wife and I return home after a long day at our jobs.
Still, it will never feel right to me to send my children back to school before Labor Day, no more so than it feels right for their year to end before Memorial Day. That’s how I grew up, starting the day after Labor Day and finishing the week after Memorial Day. School ran from September into June, not August into May.
That crochetiness aside, I’ve realized we just haven’t packed as many memories into our summer as I’d hoped.
Oh sure, we had our big summer vacation trip and a run to Cedar Point on the docket. We even hit a few fishing holes and went for some walks up to our local ice cream shop.
But we didn’t do enough of those summertime memories to make it feel like a successful summer. My childhood was so packed with gathering lightning bugs, backing a boat into a reservoir and just enjoying nature that it felt like that’s all I did during my summer. All I did was have fun, as I remember it.
I fear my children will look back at this summer and remember more running them with us to various appointments and commitments. They’ll recall a few of these high points, but it won’t be enough.
Sure, we’re to blame, but so is a world so completely focused on keeping children busy. I can’t think of how many times my wife and I planned something interesting to do, only to have a practice for this or that pop up in the way. Our trip to Cedar Point last week meant skipping a pair of practices for two of our daughters, and it was only possible because our oldest wasn’t working that night.
I’m glad my children are involved in things they enjoy. I want them to be a part of their communities. But I also want them to be able to enjoy the quiet. I want them to be able to tell the difference between the dog days of summer and the busy ones in the fall.
Soon enough, we’ll be back in the swing of early wake-ups, rushing to school and rushing to practices and games. We’ll transform from mom and dad to taxicab drivers. We’re back to staring at our calendar to make sure we don’t miss something, sometimes needing to have kids in two or three places at the same time. We’ll begin a nine-month sprint to the end of the year, with few opportunities to just enjoy being a family together.
So pardon me if I set aside my regular dad duties of saying how thrilled I am to have the kids back in school this week. I’d really rather have just a little more time to make some memories, for their sake and mine.
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