Wrapping Up

Morning lakeside walk with the kids from a few weeks ago

I started my morning with a customized Apple playlist titled “Get Up!” It started with Katy Perry’s song “Birthday,” and I instantly skipped ahead to the next song. “Poison,” by A.A. Williams began playing, which is from her recent album Solstice. I heard that and thought, OMG yes- this is my mood this morning.

This post is my ode to summer. Actually, wait. That isn’t right. The dictionary states that an ode ‘is a formal lyric poem that praises, honors, or celebrates a person, place, thing, or abstract idea.’ Am I celebrating the summer? No, not really. So what am I doing here? This is my farewell to summer- perhaps that is more accurate.

My husband has been away the past two days on a work trip,and I messaged him last night with something to the effect of, “oh my gosh, this has been such a hard day, but would have been so much harder had you been here.” This is how you know your relationship with your partner has been through many moons, when you say things like this to each other. It wasn’t said as a mean-spirited comment. It was the truth. My husband works from home, and the kids and I have been home all summer. Having him gone for a couple of days removes one of our trickiest variables. We didn’t have to navigate the day or our space with him working in the corner. With him gone, I didn’t have to hustle to get up and going yesterday morning (which was great, as I slept like poo the night before), so I was able to ease into the day.

We are now getting our ducks in a row with school supplies and school uniform and clothing upgrades. This requires a bit of organization, which my kids aren’t really hankering to do in the moment. So there is some pushing and pulling with that. It makes sense to me, the reticence. But it also has to get done- or otherwise you’re showing up to school without being in uniform. Sometimes you just have to do things you don’t want to do. This is what I am trying to pass along to the kids, while also helping them savor these last couple weeks of freedom that they’ve been enjoying. But maybe this is leading to some desperation on their part; having to set down the livestream of their favorite YouTuber is certainly not what they want, especially when what they are being instructed to do instead is to shop for school shirts.

This is why this post is not a true ode to summer. Summer has felt too complicated for me. Summer has pulled me away from myself, from my own routine, from my own boundaries. I’ve felt at the mercy of parenting and partnering, two intertwined entities. My husband has to work, my kids need to get out of their rooms. I’ve had to constantly provide this summer- and I can write that sentence without focusing on a direct object. What am I providing? Everything. Provide provide provide. It’s been a summer of daily walks and sliced cucumber and screen time and smoothies and apples with peanut butter. Trips to Starbucks, trips to Target, trips to Whole Foods. So much of that is nice (cucumber has always been a salve to my nervous system, always), but I’ve been the puppet master of all of it. I am so tired of trying to be five steps ahead of everyone else here in this little apartment in the sky.

During my recent readathon with my daughter, one of the books that I read was Belle Burden’s new memoir, Strangers. This was left in our delightful book box here in Dearborn Park, a gift for me, who happened to be passing by. In her memoir, Burden describes parenting her teenagers as being in the role as a potted plant, and this rang so true for me. So much of this phase of parenting is just me being here, being present, being nearby. I feel that it will be this way for the next several years.

I am starting to formulate what is possible once my kids get back to school. Time for writing, time to focus on coaching work. Time to come back into myself again. Hints of hope are starting to appear on the edges of these days. “Maybe not now, but soon,” this hope whispers to me.

So, in this farewell to summer, let me highlight some of the small moments that recently filled my cup. I take these pictures and then sift through them. In the times when others head to social media, I look through my own pictures.

My daughter’s and my book piles- from 24 hours of reading (Bean giving his cool approval in the background)

Our gorgeous Dearborn Park book box. I share this with some reservation- for its existence feels so private for our little neighborhood!

Got the kids to the Riverwalk for lunch last week.

This mantis showed up at my son’s soccer game Friday night- my husband and I spent most of the first half of the game watching him :)

I wrote most of this during a Silent Writing session with A Writing Room, my writing group that I really want to participate more in but have had to set off to the side so often this summer. I was able to join the 9 am session, and the conversation at the end was so good- focused on what it means to declare ourselves as writers, and how we can say that without external proof or validation. And as I was sitting in that space, surrounded by the wisdom of these women on this call, a tornado warning was issued for Chicago. So then I ended up on our bathroom floor with two teenagers (one of them very nervous from the alerts blaring from our devices and the warning siren outside) and two cats. And this about sums up this summer, truly!

In praise of Alanis