Lazy, Hazy Days of Summer

Why must we fill our days with activities

I remember long, lazy summers growing up.

My days were spent walking barefoot, playing with friends, and countless adventures fueled by my own imagination and the freedom to roam at will. I spent one summer as a teenager at Bible camp, but for the most part my three months off from school I was home or hanging out in the neighborhood.

As Barcelona wrapped up her first year of grade school, I found myself chatting with other moms about how we planned to spend the summer break. My approach was simple: A week at the coast, swimming at the pool pool, free family films at the Natomas Marketplace movie theater, play dates with friends, and a few family day trips.

When I posed the same question to my peers, I found myself bombarded with lists of preplanned activities designed to occupy every spare minute of their children's' two-month break from school. Bible School – twice. Gymnastics camp. Soccer. Swim lessons – twice. Summer school. Art camp.

Due to poor planning on my part, I booked our trip to the coast during the one week my children normally attend a neighborhood Bible school program. But that was only one week out of the eight. I considered swim lessons, but the idea of having to be somewhere everyday for two weeks did not appeal to me.

And I began to wonder, was I being a good mom? Should I have signed my two children up for a bevy of activities to fill their summer days? Truth be told, I started to feel more than a little inadequate.

That was until I talked to my own mom, who lives a mere 10 minutes from us. She quickly poo-pooed the idea my children would not be doing enough.

“They only have two months off,” she reminded me.

So while many of my kids' friends were at Bible camp, our family was hanging out in a speck of a town on the Mendocino coast called Anchor Bay. We took hikes as a family and spent hours on the beach where we collected shells and played in the sand. I pretended to read a novel, but mostly I enjoyed the quiet the comes with not being in the city.

When we returned to Sacramento, many of the children we knew were on their way to a second Bible school camp. We instead donned our swim suits and the children practiced swimming and made water footprints on the hot cement. My little ones picked blackberries and nectarines in our own backyard, filling their tummies with sweet, homegrown fruit. I made juicy cobblers and froze the extras for later. My son played dragons and my daughter filled pages with her colorful artwork.

Above all, we enjoyed the time spent together. We relished not having to jump out of bed every morning and rush out the door to be somewhere else. My children grew stronger from chasing each other in the yard, climbing the furniture, and eating a lot of freshgrown food. Our skin got tan, our hair a little messy, our hearts full of love for each other.

In the end, it was better for my children to have some long, lazy summer days to do what they do best – be children. There will be plenty of time for the rest.

Parent Tales Column ~ August 2007