How to have a fantastic summer.

One down 2 to go. School is so close to being out.  Andrew is done.  Rebecca is all but done, and Gabe wants to be done.  It's coming, that beautiful time of endless possibilities.  And because summer is so magical, I'm starting to feel the presssure that I always feel when expectations are high and my abilities are middling.  How are we going to make this summer great?  It started in March when people began asking me what we were doing this summer.  The answer is pending. As I thought about our greatest summer memories, very few of them were planned and organized by a mother.  Okay, I always have opinions, but mostly my job is to organize the work and structure so as to raise the value and motivate the possessors of free time.


When my Dad was in Dental School and we lived in the projects at Wolsey Ct. in Portland, Oregon, my memory of summer is of me pretty much running free through the neighborhood with my friend, Wess.  My mom was available, and I had to iron my washcloths before I could play, but she didn't plan my whole day. I'm pretty sure no adult would plan bee catching as the activity.  She did provide me with the mason jar, but I came up with capturing them in the clover and adding them to the jar until there were too many to manage all by myself. When an errant bee sneaked out and stung me on the finger I knew it was time for the next activity.  I went crying to my mommy and she put baking soda paste on the sting.  When I forgot how bad it hurt, the bee catching would resume.  One time I needed some money, so I put some clover leaves in a pretty box lined with cotton and went selling door to door.  No one needed any clover leaves that day, but maybe some other time.

When I was 5 our family moved to Corvallis, OR. We lived first on Grant Street.  The best thing about summer on Grant Street was sitting in the cherry tree eating cherries and spitting the seeds to the ground.  I felt satisfied that I was planting a new tree with every spit.  There should be about 500 cherry trees in a 20 ft. radius right about now.  On another great day, after my sister and I dressed like ladies, I used the high heel of my beautiful lady shoe to stab into the fallen gravenstein apples so we could suck out the juice.  On special days my mom let me walk down to the store to buy a nickel fudgesicle if I promised to use the crosswalk.  I had another favorite activity that my mom never knew about.  It gives me shivers to think about it.  I would push my bike up to the top of a double hill.  The reward for the long push was soaring down, fast as the wind.  So, there was a stop sign at the bottom of the hill.  I almost always stopped, but maybe a couple of times, if it looked like there were no cars, I sped right through the intersection.  Basically, I could have gotten myself killed, but for some reason I was spared.  No one ever do that.  Ever.

On Circle Place we had the Johnsons as neighbors.  I have mentioned playing with them before.  The most magical summer activity was when Kris and Lori started collecting comic books.  Have we talked about my love for Archie and Betty and Veronica and Jughead?  Well, we didn't just read comic books.  We had a comic book fort.  We hung sheets from the clothes line and laid around on sleeping bags reading stacks and stacks of comics.  The most magical part of all was our secret food stash.  Earlier, we had put cake mix onto aluminum foil squares and folded them up.  We hid them around the yard.  When we were hungry we just found one, added hose water, and voila!  Instant cake batter.  That was the life.  In Corvallis, it never got hot outside.  If it hit 70 degrees we went all crazy and busted out the swimsuits and sprinklers.  We usually had goosebumps and a towel close by.  The public pool was indoors and of course my mom let me ride my bike over there if I had a friend.

In California, it was definitely hot...like over 100 every day hot.  When we were lucky, a neighbor would invite us to their pool.  Otherwise we rode our bikes 1.5 miles into town.  It seemed like 15 miles.  It's probably because of the high level of danger we had to endure.  The Bunting family across the street owned a Newfoundland named Major. He could have gobbled me in one bite.  When he came bounding out of the yard to chase me down the road, it's lucky I didn't die from a heart attack.  I don't think that much adrenaline is healthy.  If we didn't get eaten by Major, there were the Olds'  little yappy dogs to contend with.  They weren't much bigger than rats, but they actually did bite, so it was hard to relax with one of them at your heels.  If I pedalled fast enough and long enough they got tired and went back home.  It made the ride to town a little more exciting than it should have been, but we braved it.  If we turned right instead of left on Visalia road we could go to Amelia's grocery for a candy bar.  So dogs or no dogs, we braved the ride frequently.  The best part about summer in CA was watermelon, grapes, peaches, and berries from my dad's garden, and lots of cantaloupes from generous farmers.

Summer is a great time for children to develop the important skills, Lego building, friendship bracelet making, beading, tennis, Quidditch, slip 'n slide, theme parties, yard saling, shirt tie-dying, water balloon construction and throwing, and couch to couch reading.

Summer reading is still one of my favorite things in life. Thanks, J. K. Rowling for the week of 5 people fighting over two books night and day, and for making road trips infinitely more tolerable.  What worse punishment could there be than to get booted from the Harry Potter on tape car into the Mom and babies car for bad behavior?  For the final Harry Potter installment we went to 4 stores before we found the rare and coveted audio CD's.  But there was a little too much text for the trip from Utah to Illinois.  Our friends were understanding when after our arrival the kids couldn't take the suspense and  sequestered themselves in another room to listen to the resolution.  There was the Eragon summer and the Twilight summer and the Hunger Games summer and the Inkheart summer and the Mistborn Summer...so great.

 And of course we'll be eating our favorite summer foods; watermelon, peaches, snow cones, orange juice popsicles, Publix Hula Hula ice cream,  mango salsa, and fresh tomato salsa.  I've banned my kids from ice pops.  I know I'm old and crotchety, but I found one too many plastic wrappers on the grass and snapped.  But maybe I'll introduce them to hose water cake batter.