Don’t tell Dustin, but sometimes he has a point. For six hours out of the day Monday through Friday, September to June, my oldest boys, Ford and Owen, are in school (No. 1 reason not to home-school: Public school is free and not inside your house).
According to Dustin, this time is the perfect opportunity for me to relax and get things done. With Ford and Owen away, I am responsible only for our 2-year-old son, Lindell, who until just recently took a nap during most of the school hours. It’s true that I was able to write, clean windows, make dinner and do many other things, but in my school-year naivete, I considered these tasks to be very difficult — never mind the sleeping toddler — and I called Dustin an assortment of bad names for believing that watching a toddler was anything but exhausting.
When Dustin came home at night, it was his turn. (My 88-year-old grandmother, Doris, laughs at this. “When I was raising kids,” she says, “there was no ‘his’ turn. It was only my turn.”)
All of this changed last week with the last day of school, also known around our house as “The Last Day of Sarah’s Vacation.”
Really, who thought summer vacation for kids was a good idea? Waiting in the pickup line at school on that last day, you could actually see the dread on the parents’ faces. This was in stark contrast to the giddy excitement expressed by the teachers, who were looking forward to a much-deserved two-plus months off.
I had hoped that my children would be sent home with instructions clipped to their book bags so that I could remember how to care for them. Something like “Ford has his snack at 10:30,” would have been helpful. Or “Remind Owen to wash his hands after using the bathroom.”
This feeling of certain forthcoming ineptitude reminded me of another last day, a mother’s last day in the hospital, when the nursing staff releases you into the world with your newborn baby, and you think, “But the instruction manual is missing from this one!”
We are almost two weeks into summer vacation now, however, so most of what I need to know is coming back to me, the same way my fingers automatically get into position and find the right keys when I’m near a piano, even after months of not playing. For instance, it has come back to me now how children are stubbornly at-tuned to the rising sun, even if it happens before 7 o’clock in the morning. Putting them to bed later doesn’t help. Children intuitively know that sleeping in is a luxury for their parents, and therefore, they set out to destroy it.
Similarly, when a mother tries to sleep past 7 o’clock, it has been brought back to my attention that if she receives an important phone call, her child will answer it and say, “Um, my mom is still in bed.” When that important phone call is received again later in the day, the same child will say, “Now my mom is at the spa,” even if she was really at the gym.
I have also been reminded of children’s fondness for water guns and their undying devotion to a particular one. It will look identical to all the other water guns in the child’s backup artillery, but you can be sure there are nearly imperceptible differences that only the child can see. No other water gun will suffice if that cheap plastic one is lost. You take the kids on a walk to the closest drugstore and buy them new water guns anyway. For a moment, these seem to be worthy replacements. You think the afternoon is all yours again. You can almost visualize a quiet day of the children entertaining themselves with the water guns. Except, when you get home from the drugstore, the kids say, “I guess I don’t want to play with water guns after all.”
This happens approximately five hours before your husband is supposed to return home from work. You still have lunch dishes to clean, clothes to fold, a column to write and dinner to make. You are frustrated and tired. You briefly consider changing your name to anything except “Mom.” You wish that the laundry would iron itself and that the bathrooms would magically be clean.
You wonder when the kids go back to school. And then, the last thing you recall from summers before is that drenching your husband with the new water blaster when he gets home is totally not beneath you.
Maine author and columnist Sarah Smiley’s writing is syndicated weekly to publications across the country. She and her husband, Dustin, live with their three sons in Bangor. Her new book, “I’m Just Saying …”, is available wherever books are sold. She may be reached at sarah@sarahsmiley.com.