Well, as you can see by my lack of posts since May, we have had quite a busy summer. We were constantly on the go; spending time with friends at impromptu pool parties and neighborhood gatherings. Sleeping late. Going to movies. Gluttonous eating and drinking. And now it’s over. I feel like it was yanked out from under us right in the midst of the fun and frivolity. And yet, it has to end, doesn’t it? Life has to continue to move forward. My kids have to go back to school and become educated, productive members of society. I have to stop barreling toward 300 pounds with the way I’ve been devouring food and drink. We all have to get back to “normal”. Normal totally blows.
Not really. It’s just that we are coming off of such a nice summer. The kids and I really spent almost all day every day together; never with much of an agenda. Yet our days always seemed to be filled. One of my favorite things was we started a new tradition of walking in the neighborhood at night and just talking. Relating to one another. It was the one time in the day when the girls didn’t get on each other’s nerves. We laughed and acted silly and occasionally ran into other neighborhood friends. The girls’ favorite thing to do on our walks was play “Would You Rather”. We would ask each other hard-hitting questions like, Would you rather tee-tee in your pants or throw up on your teacher on the first day of school? Then we would each have to explain our thought process on why we chose the response we chose. Utter ridiculousness. But it was such fun.
We travelled some. Mostly to the lake; many times with friends. The lake house is great for reconnecting with friends we don’t often see. I especially enjoy watching our kids become friends with our friends’ kids. Even though they may only see each other at the lake once a year, they look forward to it and they fall right back in line every time. It’s nice. One day/night this summer, we had neighborhood moms and their kids over. There were 22 of us there – good heavens! What were we thinking?! There were bodies all over my house! And it was an absolute blast.
We have such great people in our neighborhood. The girls don’t know how lucky they are to grow up around such a big network of friends. When I was growing up, it was basically me and my siblings and two sisters at the end of my street. When we weren’t sparring with the kids across the street, we might occasionally get together for a kickball game, but that was about it. My kids are growing up in a neighborhood where they walk out their door and have over 10 kids on their street alone. They could have a kickballtournament with brackets and everything!
In addition to our lake trips, we also went to Chicago – the girls’ first plane ride! They were so cute rolling their suitcases through the airport. They thought they were so big being served peanuts and Sprite on the plane. It never occurred to them to fear any of it. I wish I had flown at their age. I’ve always been a very nervous flyer. To this day, I get sweaty palms the whole time and am constantly aware that we are in the air. But they just sat back andenjoyed the view. They also had a blast once we got in the city. Of course, the fact that we took them to a two-story American Girl store helped, I’m sure.
Another highlight was taking our annual trip down to St. George Island, Florida. St. George is a fairly new destination for us. We have been going to Hilton Head for more than 20 years now with my side of the family. St. George is where we go with Mike’s family. I absolutely love it! It isn’t crowded. It’s quaint. Great seafood (of course, what beach doesn’t have great seafood?). I am never more relaxed then when I am at the beach. I could sit on the beach under an umbrella with the waves crashing and the breeze blowing every day for the rest of my life and not feel like I had missed anything. It’s just calming. Serene.
It’s funny how a person’s trips to the beach evolve over time. When you are a kid, it’s all about impatiently waiting for your parents to drink their coffee or do whatever it is they have to do before they can take you out to play in the surf. It seems to take forever! You make a day of ridingand jumping waves. You dig in the sand and make castles. Your castles never look like the show-offs down the beach who have somehow sculpted a palace out of the same sand you were using. You methodically unfurl your kite and raise it proudly into the air before you realize that it isn’t really terribly exciting. And each night you go to sleep in a bed full of sand. Pure heaven.
As a teen, at least a teen girl, you are there for one reason and one reason only: to get a tan. You are out before anyone else and stay out long after everyone else has tired of the sand sticking to their skin. Everyday you check your tan lines to be sure they are whiter than they were the previous day. And if it rains, you are inconsolable. I guess teenagers are also there looking for other teenagers - a summer romance, if you will. I never was, because I was always there with my extended family. They were so entertaining that it never occurred to me to go out and meetsomeone else. There’s no way they would have been as fun as the people I was there with. But most normal teenagers do that, I suppose. I wonder what it must be like to be normal…
Anyway, when you are an ABB (Adult Before Babies) you finally notice how beautiful the water and surrounding scenery is. It becomes a place of respite instead of play. The trip focuses more on what you will be eating and drinking during the days and nights. Of planning meals (if you will be the chef) or picking the perfect restaurant. Ensuring you’re not our of bloody mary mix for your it’s-5:00-somewhere happy hour. And while you’re an ABB, if someone else on your trip is an AWB (Adult With Babies) you marvel at how much their trip must suck having to tend to a baby. It’s great birth control, actually. You go inside and give Junior his bottle and I’ll grab the Bocce set for myself and the other ABBs. Probably the worst part of an AWB’s beach trip is the poopy swim diaper. It’s always diarrhea and ¾ of it is sand – some of which they’ve consumed and some of which has simply found its way into their pants.
Once you yourself are an AWB, your trip is mainly about how it’s not really your trip anymore. You can’t stay on the beach all day and relax under the umbrella with an adult beverage. You’ve got naps to monitor and bottles to prepare. Plus, you have to spend each and every moment on the beach in pursuit of your one beach trip goal at this point in your life – capturing that perfect baby beach picture. And it ain’t easy. A lot of babies don’t like the sand and are therefore grimacing on those rare occasions you can actually get them to look in the direction of the camera.
Once you transition from an AWB to an AWK (Adult WithKids), your focus is more on wanting to foster your love of the beach in your children. You are planting the seeds of the eventual nostalgia you want them to feel for their childhood beach trip. I see it in my children now. They love the relaxed pace. They love the smell of salt in the air. They could build sandcastles all day. And it was actually on our beach trip this year when the girls and I started walking together at night. We used to do that on our beach trips when I was a kid. It’s just what would happen after we’d eat. Before anything in the kitchen would be cleaned, the entire lot of us would head out and walk down the beach for 30-45 minutes. I love being on the beach at night. The sand is cool. You can smell people grillingfood. And everyone around is snapping pictures so you can trade cameras with someone and get a shot of the entire family. Unfortunately, in our picture, the wind was blowing my shirt against my skin and my belly bulge isclearly visible so we will have to come up with something else for the Christmas card.
I’m guessing the next phase in the beach trip evolution- although I’m not there yet - is when you are an AWT (Adult With Teenagers). Probably that trip is about trying to reconnect with your kids or trying to get them to acknowledge your existence. Begging them to not make you walk 40 paces behind them if you can actually get them to go on that beach walk after dinner. What would probably follow would be ENA (Empty Nest Adult), where you’d be there together after not having seen your kids in a while since they are busy building their own lives. Then would come GPBT. Grandparent Beach Trip. Watching your kids play with their kids and wondering how much longer you’ll be making these trips. Getting home at the conclusion of the week and looking through old photos you took of your babies on the beach; the photos yellowed with age (much like your teeth, if you still have them). Hoping your kids are aware that these are the good times. These are the days they and their own kids will remember.
I guess that’s what is making me reflect on our summer and lament its passing. I truly enjoyed it. Every day of it. In July, I went back to work. Maybe it made me value more the time I had left with them before school started. Although it is part-time work, it took away from the time I had to take them to the pool or to the movies or just to sit down and have lunch with them. As that first-day-of-school date approached, it made me very sad. I was more aware of time I can’t get back. Time well spent, certainly. But time that has passed nonetheless.
The older we get, the faster it seems that the time goes by. These are the good times. These are the days we will remember. Being an AWB is very tough. It’s all-consuming. You’re tired all the time. Worn out from the constant demands on your time and attention. But something happens when you become an AWK. Your children are more capable of doing a lot of things for themselves and your time with them starts to become more about relating to them as the people they are and they are becoming. And doing that was what made this summer so special and so memorable for me personally. I miss it so much even though admittedly it’s nice to be back on a schedule. Soon enough we will all be in the thick of the school year and fall festivities and it will be a distantmemory. But it will remain a lovely memory and I will recall it fondly when talking with my kids about the beautiful moments in my life.
