Summer Memories
We’ve just returned from a five-stop tour of the northeast, seeing museums, historical sites, parks and rivers and waterfalls, and most importantly, friends and family that we haven’t seen in many years. We’d planned this trip, or something like it, for two summers ago, but flying cross country and traveling so much was out of the question in July 2020.
It was so fun. It was so exhausting. Even with the amazing support of all of our loved ones, by the time we’d made it down to Washington, DC, we were bribing the kids just to get them out the hotel room door. Heck, I was bribing myself there at the end. And now we’re home, our buckets full of love and memories, and with a long, lazy summer set out in front of us.
Except, the twins don’t really do long or lazy. One of them made a list of the things she wanted to do this week.
It had 11 things on it.
It’s already Wednesday.
We’ve only been home for 48 hours.
I love how much energy they have. It certainly helped as we marched them around Boston, through New York subways, up and down hiking trails and then finally along the Mall to the Washington Monument. But today, I want to celebrate a trip well spent by sitting in the shade with a good book and a glass of iced tea.
There’s a lot of pressure these days to make summers really, really special for our kids. I constantly see that refrain, “You only get 18 of them!” And it’s so much pressure for perfection. We should be doing museums, and parks, and pools, and crafts. We should spend the long hours doing all the things we feel like we don’t have time for during the school year.
But we just had a trip like that. Museums. And Parks. And Pools. (Not so many crafts, to be fair.) And in the end, the thing my kids enjoyed the most?
The People.
That’s what they cared about. All the Aunties and Uncles and Cousins who doted on them and listened to them and made them feel like there is a whole world of people out there who just…like them. It’s kind of crazy, right? The idea that all across this country, there are people who like them for who they are. Who think fondly of them and look forward to seeing them and miss them when they’re gone. I think knowing that might just shape my kids’ childhood more than any Insta-worthy destination would.
These kiddos have grown up in a world full of big uncertainties. They know that the whole world can change in the span of a week. Isn’t it a miracle that the one thing that they are never uncertain about is that there is a whole crowd of people who are rooting for them?
I care a lot about community - finding it, building it, sustaining it. But I didn’t realize how much it mattered until I realized sometime around 2016 that there were no grownups making everything work out. There was no arc of history naturally bending, a slide for us to blissfully ride down. We are our own heroes. And that work looks boring, and annoying, and often exhausting. But as tired as I am, when it comes to the lives of these girls and all the kids I am blessed to know, I find the energy to do whatever it takes so that they know that there is a whole crowd of people who are rooting for them.
