Summer! Whatever happened to just getting out of school on June 28th and then playing outside with your friends for 8 weeks and then heading back to school? Why as parents do we feel compelled to fill every moment of our kids lives with some sort of activity and we feel guilty if they have time that isn't filled. I don't get it. Declan is at hockey camp this week and he absolutely loves it, but while there tieing skates I'm listening to other parents give a run down of the rest of their kids summers and the only thing I can think is that these kids don't have a moment to just be kids. Next week Declan is doing a half day tennis thing with his buddy, Ronan. The afternoons they will spend together at our place, probably launching a variety of projectiles: balls, frisbees, badminton birdies on to the roof that Dean will have to retrieve every night so they can do it again the following day. They will ride their bikes and go to the park, and likely get dirty, OH the horror! I think Declan is going to do some golfing the third week of August, and then that is the end of his planned activities. Should I feel guilty? I don't think so, but other parents think I'm crazy to let him have so much empty time. "What will you do with him?" they ask, like he's some kind of unwanted visitor to our home that I need to entertain. Well actually we'll talk over breakfast, and maybe play a game in the morning to keep working on that reading, then maybe we'll have a look at the list he made at the end of school of things he wanted to do this summer. This was a list I asked him to make at the beginning of July so that I could plan trips to Canada's Wonderland and Ontario Place, the Hockey Hall of Fame, and set up a family trip to Muskoka to go Wakeboarding....things we've done in the past, that is what I was expecting to see. That is not what he put on his list! He wants to go on a picnic, a real picnic using the picnic basket that he has seen in the closet under the stairs, he wants to go walk the trails at Wildwood, because he thinks Marta will really like the trees, he wants to play golf in St Marys with Dean, he wants to go on more bike rides with his family, he wants to have a camping sleepover in the backyard. At first I was surprised, there was no mention of a big summer trip (we usually do at least one every summer), no mention of a big commercialized amusement park, no mention of any big expensive equiment or lessons or admissions...I was a little taken aback. I must admit though we haven't crossed off half his list and we are already halfway through the summer. Now I do feel guily. Not because I haven't filled every moment of his summer, but because I haven't taken the opportunity he left on my bedside table a month ago....
Our lives are too busy. I've been on maternity leave since last October and medical leave for two months before that, and I feel like every moment has been filled by a "to do" list....Last night I looked at my list: paint the living room and rec room, install hardwood floors on the main level of the house, tile the bath, kitchen and foyer, book family vacations at Mackinaw and Kawarthas, find wakeboard lessons at the Kawarthas, clean out the kitchen cabinets, get the kids passports,.... not very exciting, not very relaxing, and really, not very important; I threw my list out!
So while Declan is at his last day of hockey camp, and after we get home from Marta's first art class, I will be under the stairs searching for the tent and the picnic basket, and the net to catch butterflies or minnows or tadpoles, and for the stuff that makes the fire turn cool colours, and this weekend while sitting around the camfire in the backyard roasting marshmallows and making spider weiners and smores, we will have another look at the list of Declan's and see what August will bring....
