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June 14, 2005

So much, and so little

Today it's going to be 95 degrees. Like the middle of summer and we've still got a week to go before summer officially arrives. It's the last few days of school and Moo and Herself are in countdown mode. "What are you doing for the summer, Mom?" Herself wanted to know. "I'm working," I told her. She didn't understand. "You don't have the summer off?"

No, I don't have the summer off. When I was her age, summer break began in the middle of May and all the moms stayed home. My neighborhood, on an Air Force base in New Mexico, was filled with kids. What did I do for the summer? Mostly I think I spent a good part of every day driving my mother crazy. I remember her sending me outside and locking the door behind me so I couldn't keep running in every 15 minutes to ask her for a drink (one of my friends' moms would lock the door but put a Tupperware pitcher on the front porch, filled with iced Kool Aid).

Left to our own devices my friends and I would walk to the store and buy Necco Wafers to eat on the way home and Matchbox cars we'd build elaborate road systems for in the dirt of somebody's back yard. We'd spend mornings hunting for lizards--sometimes we caught them and sometimes we only got their tails. We'd spend afternoons lying in wading pools, letting the gaspingly-cold water from the hose cool us off; or we'd play on somebody's Slip 'n Slide. We'd run up to the baseball field and play under the bleachers. If we got thirsty we had learned to suck the water from the in-ground sprinklers--it tasted nasty, like dirt, but that was part of the appeal I guess. We'd sneak into the officers' neighborhood, where the houses were much bigger than our own, and eat the plums off the trees in their front yards. We'd set up a record player in somebody's carport and dance to 45's--Elvis, Herman's Hermits, The Beatles--learning to do The Twist.

In the evening the air smelled like grass and the mountains would turn pink as the sun set. We'd ride bikes until it got dark and the street lights came on, which was the signal that it was time to go in. I remember going to bed while it was still light out--something my own children would never do, and I can't blame them. I hated it, and felt that the whole world was still awake and having fun while I lay in bed and listened.

What am I going to do for the summer? I'm going to get up early and come down here to work every morning. I'm going to drive into the city and come home in traffic every afternoon. I'll worry about my kids and wonder what they're doing. If I locked them out of the house I expect I'd have Social Services at my door in an hour. It's a different world now, naturally. "How can you let her just roam the neighborhood?" one of my neighbors asked me last summer, watching Herself ride her bike up and down the street. How could I? How could I not? That's what summer is for.

Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)