Making Summer Plans
By Margaret Travis

Every year my husband and I go through this exercise called, “What Are The Children Going to Do This Summer?” That’s the time when all parents sit down at their dining room table with the various brochures they get from various entities and try to figure out how your kid can get the most out of the summer of no school, yet at the same time the parents will not be driven completely nuts by trying to figure out where they are supposed to be on a given day. Oh, and not spending your whole day in the car ferrying children to one event or another is always a plus. And of course, not breaking you financially.

When I was a kid, summers were spent on my grandparents’ farm. My parents would pack us into the car as soon as the bell at school rang releasing us for the summer, and we wouldn’t return home again until the weekend before school started in August. I don’t remember it as the bucolic plantation that the term “farm” conjures up. Instead, I remember it as dry, dusty, boring and hot. My grandparents didn’t have air conditioning. The only television I recall watching was the Porter Wagner Show, and it came in fuzzy and distorted on a small black and white television. And did I say it was hot? I remember spending most of my summer on a knoll, a few hundred yards from my grandparents’ house that had trees and huge boulders that were perfect for laying on. And did I say it was hot? They also didn’t subscribe to the “keep them ‘engaged’ all summer lest they forget what they learned the year before” theory. I spent many hours on the “rock” wishing I was someplace else.

My kids over the years have had swimming lessons, sleep-over camp, Camp Fire camp, zoo camp, Omniplex camp, acting camp in an effort to keep them busy and to keep them engaged. Also, it keeps them from spending the summer on the sofa watching the Disney Channel. But sometimes it took a spreadsheet to figure out where they were going on any given day and whether one or the both of us would have to take off early to make sure they made it to their various activities.

Last summer we tried something different. Swim lessons, basketball camp and one week of sleep-over camp was all the kids did. Instead we hired a teenaged girl to come over three or four afternoons a week and stay with the kids. We hired a teenaged girl who was responsible. We hired a teenaged girl who had her own car and cell phone and who had a good driving record. I had visions of the children and the teenaged babysitter going to the zoo, going to the swimming pool and going to the library. All those things I hadn’t gotten to do during my adolescent summer vacations.

I told the babysitter to be guided by the children, but I showed her where the library card was, the pass to the Knights of Columbus pool and the zoo pass. I talked to my daughter about the things they could do, but she was a little vague about what she had planned. I let it go. I noticed they were playing in the sprinklers in the back yard. They were swinging on the swing set. They were playing Scrabble, Candy Land and Uno. They were watching movies. But they weren’t really going anywhere or doing anything. I asked my daughter about this. She told me they had a schedule, and while she tried to be subtle, frankly they didn’t have time to do any of the things I’d planned for them.

As I was leaving for work one morning, my son and daughter were eating breakfast. I asked what they had planned for the day. My daughter cocked her head to one side and said, “It’s Wednesday, we play in the sprinklers today!” And when I thought about it, while it wasn’t educating them or enlarging their worlds in any way, that wasn’t a bad way to be spending the summer.