We're Free!

It's only the first week of summer vacation, and I feel like we've lived an entire month, an entire childhood. We've done all our favorite things! We wake up and laze about, making smoothies and pancakes at a snail's pace, and spend an entire morning dressed like conductors riding a train (Cass' bed) through the mountains with a one-man band in the back cabin. Pool, Greenfield Village, strawberry picking, hiking, biking, backyard baseball, Belle Isle. We can do whatever we want, when we want.

Summer vacation feels like a time stamp on what has changed since the summer before. We slip effortlessly back into old routines of summers past, as if the nine months in between never happened at all. But it's slightly, strangely, disconcertingly different. Small growths and spurts and skills that take me by surprise. Our afternoons feel both empty and wide-open, because Cass lost his nap this winter, and I am disoriented. Even though it's been this way for six months, it feels fresh again. I can still feel those long hot summer naps in my bones, when we'd all read a huge stack of books and conk out from whatever summertime fun left us exhausted, sweaty and dirty. 

We ride bikes to the riverfront, but no one is scared of the shooting water. No one falls down and scrapes a knee. And Cass would rather be on his own bike than behind me in the trailer. He's growing out of the straps, his knobby knees sticking out to the side, much higher than I can fathom. At the pool, I only have to carry one little boy around in the water, and I can sit and READ with one eye while they play on the playground next to the pool deck. We have a little lunch picnic between pool/playground rotations, and for a minute, I'm transported to the summer when I was pregnant with Ollie, and Cass was younger than Ollie is now. It all feels exactly the same but so drastically different. I understand why families go back to the same places year after year. Why we'll continue to go back to Maine for the rest of our lives. Because that tradition and routine, the same smells, sights and experiences--it all makes you feel like you're capturing something that you'll never have again. Building on the same memory, making sure all the little memories run together to form something solid. Little changes along the way--over a great long haul--until you look back and can hardly recognize the boy or discern one summer from the next.


This year, I'm going to try to mix it up. We're going to veer from steadfast routines. Try new things! Travel! Explore! And in honor of my dear pops, I'm going to try to chronicle it a little better. Because I promised him I would. And also because I don't want it all running together so much. I want to remember this summer. It's going to be a great one.

 

Robin o' the Hood

I tried hard not to be hurt when Cass declared this year that he didn't want a birthday party (WHAT!@#$@). I felt a little deflated. He wanted to do something special with two or three boys from his kindergarten class (they had to be boys!). Then there was the matter of  the requested bows and arrows. He's obsessed with Robin Hood right now. After some heated back-and-forth about how we probably could not make our own bows and go hunting at Belle Isle, I eventually won him over with the idea of an archery class. I was a little worried about behavior--would they have the attention span? the discipline?--but the instructor assured me that she teaches six-year-olds all the time, and they're actually quite capable of learning the sport. We set up bullseye targets in front of the old train station and had such a fun, magical morning, learning how to properly hold a bow and sorting through overgrown dandelions for rogue arrows. Each kid hit the target at least once, and it was such a thrill. Even Ollie (aka Little John) had a pretty good go.