Labor Day weekend is upon us! The leaves are beginning to fall for reasons other than the blistering heat. The stores are full of cozy sweaters no one will wear for two months. My house has been decked out in the Basic White Girl Fall decor of plastic leaves, pinecones, and old-fashioned pickup trucks brimming with sunflowers for the last three weeks. I’ve already made a batch of pumpkin bread and watched The Worst Witch from 1986 three times. Summer is over… kind of.
When I was little, I enjoyed summer for all the normal reasons. School was out. My parents didn’t want to pay for childcare, so it was basically anarchy at our trailer house. My brother and I jumped out of trees with umbrellas to see if we could fly. He tied his skateboard to his bike and made me ride behind him down our gravel drive. We ran around our 10 acres playing a two person version of capture the flag, resulting in a gash on my arm from a barbed wire fence, the evidence of which is still visible today. On the weekends, we took trips to the lake. We went swimming in my grandma’s pool. We played on the Slip n’ Slide, which everyone knows is the most fun you’ll ever have while getting hurt.
As I got older, the family time waned and we got cable. I still enjoyed staying up all night to watch every episode of Nick at Nite’s Block Party Summer. The next day, I’d wake up around noon and watch daytime TV until my parents got home. When they split up and it was just me and my mother, there were even fewer rules. I spent my summers inverting my sleep schedule, staying up all night watching infomercials and Sex and the City reruns while crafting and playing The Sims. No longer forced to play sports, I was free to do the same when I woke up at 2:00 in the afternoon. By this point, I was almost entirely able to avoid going outside, let alone to the lake, and my brother lived with my dad. Summer was a time of solitude for me. It wasn’t particularly healthy, but I did have fun.
I’m not sure when I developed my complete loathing for this season as a whole. I think the novelty began to wear off some time in middle school. Though the aforementioned seclusion had its perks for 11-year-old Belle, it did eventually wear on me. By the end of July, I was quite lonely and bored. When school was in session, I got to see my friends. I had something to occupy my time besides a screen. I had a reason to get dressed in the morning and go to bed at night. I missed the routine. Whatever the catalyst, by the time I hit adulthood, I abhorred summer. I always assumed that having babies would change my view on the subject. Just as Christmas becomes more magical with the joy of children, surely the excitement they have for summer would improve the experience as well. Well, here I am, a mother of three and I can confidently say that I will forever hate summer. The reasons will simply adapt to each stage of life, as they have in this era of small children. For example…
The Heat
I am something of an indoor girl year round. I won’t pretend otherwise. My favorite pastimes primarily take place inside, such as crochet, cross stitch, sewing, writing, working with my Cricut, compiling my photo albums, and reading. I do, however, have some outdoor hobbies. I like to go for walks, swim, hike, take my kids to the park, attend outdoor events like festivals and the fair. Yet, summer in the South means that from mid-May to mid-September, I can’t do any of those things. Of course, that’s been the case my entire life, but is so much worse now that I have children.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to explain to a two-year-old that it’s too hot to play in her new playhouse or jump on her new trampoline? Well, double it, because neither of my girls can comprehend that we just can’t go outside in 104° heat and the glaring sun, even if we wear sunscreen and play in water. As far as they know, we took walks every morning for months, until one day it just stopped; as did the days of swinging, blowing bubbles, riding in their Fisher Price ice cream trucks, playing with sidewalk chalk, splashing in their water table, and going to the park. Maybe in a year or two they’ll understand that this kind of heat makes everyone feel sick, especially their little brother. For the moment, however, they just think Mama’s no fun and only leaves the house for Sam’s Club trips. As much as I adore climate control, we can only color and play with Play-Do for so long.
The… Critters
Just the other day, I walked outside to get the mail, blessedly without a baby on my hip. As I pulled an envelope out of the mailbox, I noticed a large scorpion just before it crawled onto my hand. It was only a few days earlier, that we enjoyed a rare afternoon with a high in the low 90s, when I could let the girls play outside while Thomas sat in his walker under a tree. He played his little toy piano as Violet and Scarlett grilled plastic hotdogs and fought over the other Adirondack chair. I thought about how nice it was that they could enjoy the outdoors for even a few moments before it got too hot. I stood corrected, however, when later that day, I realized everyone had several random bug bites. I suppose I should be grateful, however, because just the day before, Jake found a giant dead scorpion in Thomas’s room, proving our pest control subscription entirely worth it.
These horrors aren’t limited to my relatively wooded acre of land, either. Last week, I parked at Panera and sat in the car for a moment to send a text message. I’m glad I did, because just as I put my foot on the ground, I realized I barely missed stepping on a live snake. Naturally, I screamed, panicked, ran across the parking lot, and called Jake to cry about much I hated summer and tearfully ask if a snake could crawl into my car from underneath. Garden snake or not, had I stepped on it, it would have bitten me. No herpetologist, I couldn’t have guaranteed it wasn’t poisonous and would likely have ended up with a hefty E.R. bill. The icing on the cake? The lobby of the restaurant wasn’t even open and I had to go through the drive-through. This stuff doesn’t happen in November, folks!
The Crowds
I realize that I am more or less alone in my hatred of all things summer. That’s quite clear, because from June through August every place is absolutely packed, from Target to the park to the library. A former librarian, I’ve grown to despise Summer Reading. Not only does my system waste massive amounts of tax dollars and manpower on what is essentially a children’s program, every branch is bursting at the seams for two to three months out of the year. I haven’t even taken the kids to storytime since May, because I don’t want my toddlers and baby to get trampled by the seventy-five attendants in my branch’s small meeting room. The same goes for the park on the rare cool morning. It’s simply swarming with children larger than mine, even on the toddler toys. I’m just too afraid they’ll get hurt, particularly since they’re apparently only capable of running in opposite directions when we go. It seems even Panera and UPS are overcrowded at all hours of the day. One of the primary perks of being a stay-at-home mom is the ability to enjoy the world sans other people, but I can’t do that in summer.
The Disruption
If you’ve read pretty much any of my blog posts, you know that I am a person of routine. I don’t just like the monotony of the school year. I thrive on it. While there’s always the occasional birthday party, fancy rodeo dinner, or severe weather event, fall, winter, and spring are predictable, often revolving around the holidays. September kicks off with Labor Day, followed by my birthday, the state fair, Jake’s birthday, Halloween, November family portraits, Thanksgiving, Thomas’s birthday, Christmas, New Year’s, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, and our anniversary. I don’t need the chaos of everyone’s schedules bursting with big family vacations, rodeos every other weekend, lake trips, and pool parties. They make it impossible to plan anything, even a birthday party for my little girls to celebrate the only good thing that has ever happened in summer. I like my fun scheduled y’all. You can’t do that when everyone has Exciting Adventures planned every other day.
The Peer Pressure
Despite the fact that seemingly every horror movie takes place at a lake, a camp, or on a family road trip, summer seems universally loved. Every single person in my family adores weekend trips to the lake, organized sporting events, and grand family vacations. I, however, am pretty sure that every injury I’ve ever had occurred during one of the above. The only thing I can think of that sounds less fun than any of these things is doing any of these things with three in diapers. Yet, when my family invites us to rent a cabin at a lake several hours away or even in the next state over, we always spin some tale about Jake not having enough leave or not wanting to spend the money. Neither of these is entirely false, but we could probably make it happen if we really wanted. We just don’t.
I know, I know. What could be more fun than driving five hours or even flying with three small children on Fourth of July or Labor Day weekend, so we can enjoy family fun that is mostly overshadowed by my all-consuming terror that my babies will drown or fall off of a cliff?!? Everything. Absolutely everything I could choose to do with my time sounds more fun than that. Just as with my disdain for live music, bars, and travel in general, however, I am an all alone. The rest of society is utterly convinced that I’ll have fun this time, with this crowd, and these plans. I won’t, though… because summer is the most miserable time of year, no matter the stage of life. I am overjoyed that September is finally here, so the mainstreamers and cool kids can stop trying to convince me otherwise.
