Kris Berggren writes this month in praise of summer down time for teens and tweens. After a long school year of running from basketball to debate club to rehearsals for the school play – often squeezing in a little schoolwork, too – these kids usually stare down another lineup of camps, jobs, and travel for the summer.
Kris’s recommendation? A little staring at the clouds, a little “sitting on the dock of the bay.” That can be tough advice to swallow in this achievement-oriented world. When I was little, we had a family friend who described his time at the family camp every summer thus: “We sit on the porch. We watch the boats come in. We watch the boats go out.” This stuck with me because, at the time, that kind of stillness was unimaginable. Now, well, now I could stand to watch a boat or two come in and go out.
Smaller kids need some cloud-staring time, too. Mine are still too young to know the joy and pressure of two school-free summer months, but not too young to know what it feels like to be on the go, go, go. When Friday night comes, my husband and I assess the weekend: a playdate on Saturday morning, a party on Saturday afternoon, a promised trip to the zoo or the berry farm on Sunday morning, errands on Sunday afternoon. I sometimes wonder if their little bodies feel the same relief that mine does when Sunday night offers the promise of a relatively calm workweek.
And so, be it publicly resolved: while we can’t always avoid the parties and the errands and the playdates, next weekend’s schedule is going to include some clouds.
