summer | | Page 14

Ahhhh, summer. Blue skies, monkey in the middle, running through the sprinkler in the side yard. When I think back to the hot, humid summers of my childhood, all of these things come to mind, but they’re not the first memory to emerge. Before all of those thoughts, comes the earthy scent of freshly cut grass. I hear the mower, I see my Dad, I smell that distinct, just-cut grass smell. To me, that scent has always signaled freedom: freedom from school schedules and cliquey groups; freedom to play and swim; freedom to read and dream; freedom to just be.

My childhood summers, mind you, weren’t spent in one place. I didn’t have one of those childhoods where I made fast friends with a girl in kindergarten, endured the middle school years with her, then hugged her dramatically as we graduated twelve years later. I did meet a new girl in kindergarten, and another in second, and fourth, and sixth, and ninth, and however many more you want to throw into the mix. It was more of a vagabond sort of childhood, but my family was stable and sensible and we made the very best of it. And one of the things that remained constant through all of the change, through the new schools and new friends and new towns, was the grassy smell of freedom, signaling the endless days ahead, all mine for the lounging.

There are other memories, to be sure. We mostly lived in the south and I treasure the years at the beach, walking as far as I could along the shore, looking out beyond the farthest waves, considering all of the possibilities of life. In high school, my girlfriends and I would slather on the baby oil and hit the pool, at once completely sure of ourselves and completely unnerved by the coolness of everyone else. My grandparents and extended family lived in Pennsylvania, and I would go, for a week or two at a time, and spend time with family there, building priceless relationships with my cousins and aunts and uncles.

My summer memories are an amalgam of all of these things; I almost cannot separate them. And, always, when I think back, the memories are scented with that grassy smell of freedom.

-Kirsetin

For this week’s Blog Blast, the Parent Bloggers Network is asking us to share our memories of our family’s summers. To participate, click here for details. You can win prizes from Huggies Little Swimmers, including beach towels, pool toys, and of course, Huggies Little Swimmers products.

When I was a girl, I used to spend a couple of weeks each summer with my grandparents. Most mornings, after making me breakfast, my grandmother sent me outside to play while she began her daily chores. It seemed like she was forever folding laundry and vacuuming her living room floor. There weren’t many other children in the village where she lived, so I spent long hours figuring out how to amuse myself. One of my favorite activities, on a hot summer afternoon, was to gather my books from the library and read in the shade beneath the giant oak tree at the entrance to her neighborhood. I loved to watch the cars go by; I remember wondering who all of those people were and where they were all going. Did they wonder about me, too? Thirty years later those memories are strong: I can still feel the cool grass under my bare little legs and see the sun peeking through the thick leaves above.

By the time my children came along, kids’ summers were filled with camps of every sort. Basketball camp, swim club camp, any-activity-you-can-name camp. What startled me about all of these choices wasn’t really that they existed, but how many children were enrolled in them from the youngest of ages. At first I resisted the peer pressure, partly because in addition to my three-year old, I also had an infant; partly because these camps cost a lot of money; and partly because it just didn’t seem right to book my three-year old son’s summer chock full of organized activities. Didn’t he get enough of that during the pre-school year?

But slowly, and surely, I started down the slippery slope of enrollment. “Oh, what’s one little camp,” I thought. “His friends are all doing it; he’ll love it.” And he did. But one camp turned to two, then two kids turned to three, and before I knew what hit me I found myself living out of a mini-van and shuttling three boys from ocean camp to soccer camp to crime-science investigation camp. A mini-van was most definitely not where I wanted to spend my summer.

And so I decided: our summers will be different. They will be slow. My children will be bored. They will have to learn to play b-o-r-e-d games with one another, even though the youngest can’t add yet and the oldest insists on proper rules. And I will have to practice patience, again and again, while explaining once more why they aren’t enrolled in the Greatest Camps on Earth. But the trade-off is that they get to enjoy summers like I did: figuring out fun for themselves. They get to take long walks in the woods, check out hundreds of books from the library, and gorge themselves on s’mores roasted over the firepit during our summertime outside movie extravaganza.

And I, most thankfully, do not have to spend my summer in a mini-van.

-Kirsetin

Kirsetin wrote this post to participate in the Blog Blast on the Blog Exchange. Highlights Magazine, which was also around when she was a kid (and is a magazine her kids love), is coming out with a new publication for kids from ages 2 – 6, High Five: check it out here.

Category Archives: summer

A Smell of a Memory

Old-Fashioned Fun