Millennial Summer

The summer time blues had set in. Guilt, this was supposed to be a time to relax, reset, and connect. School let out two weeks ago, and there were still two long months to go.

She fretted about school constantly. Her oldest had just finished the first grade, and he hated it. Sometimes he would start crying before he had even gotten out of bed. She was proud that her seven-year-old could read almost anything, but questioned at what cost? The academics were intense and started almost immediately in kindergarten. It wasn’t the elementary experience she thought fondly of. There were no pizza parties, or enrichment fairs, or silly carnivals. No Halloween parade, or heads up, seven up, or computer days. They didn’t even have a field trip. They were lucky to get a pajama day. She wondered if they still brought out a parachute for PE. She would have to ask.

She dreamed about giving him a magical summer. He worked hard and was a good kid. The pressure mounted when the trends screamed out, remember, mamas, you only get 18 summers with them! She wanted him to have a happy, engaged mom, not one overstimulated by noise and demand. She wanted him to experience the childhood joy she had. The kind that seemed to get erased by time and technology.

But it was only 9 a.m., and they had been up for three hours. She already battled for a meal instead of snacks and had lost miserably. The toddler insisted she wasn’t hungry whenever it was time to sit and eat. She traded fruit snacks for bites of food. She clicked off the TV because no one was watching it, but they both looked at her, offended.

It wasn’t that she was lazy or didn’t try. She would set up a paddling pool, water tables, a fucking blow up bouncy castle. And they would lose interest in less time than it took her to line everything up and fill them with water or air. She begged them to play outside, and they would just wander around unless she was organizing or involved in a game.

“You guys figure out a game to play.” She encouraged.

The day before, they went swimming. She let him ride on her back around the pool, let him splash her in the face, even though it snarled her hair terribly, because it made him laugh. Earlier in the week, she had paid 24 dollars so they could both play at an indoor playground. With stamped hands, child-proof exits, and an extremely over-priced snack cafe.

Ultimately, he needed other seven-year-old boys to play with, not a middle-aged woman whose heart was only half in it. He missed his friends. She missed his friends.

Even the promised relief of electronics failed. The iPad was abandoned on the couch. She didn’t let him have it too often, and maybe because she didn’t, it didn’t have the same hypnotic effect it seemed to have on other kids. He still wanted her to sit right next to him as he played; he wanted to narrate. She wanted to listen to him, but in reality, she could feign only so much interest in a pretend, block village, especially one he didn't even build. She tried to ask questions, but he had his own limited patience and seemed to scoff at her lack of knowledge.

The game he had come up with was pretending to take his sister’s toys. He meant no harm, and he never actually touched them, but still it would set off squealing of mine, mine, mine!

“Stop, please.” She said. “She doesn’t understand you’re joking. Help me pick up a little if you're bored.” She scanned the magnet tiles, train tracks, and dollhouse pieces that littered the living room.

She swept up crushed goldfish carcasses that had fallen to their death from a torn cellophane bag. A crinkled Capri Sun straw sleeve stuck to the hardwood flooring with its residual glue enraged her. When she bumped the table where her forgotten and precariously balanced coffee threw itself over the edge, she thought her sanity was going to go with it.

She knew it was cliche, but she was the mom who hid in the pantry to eat a good snack and scroll her phone. It was cliche but necessary, the secret stash of wrappers, clear plastic stamped with the blue hostess logo, a red heart mocking her, putting her desperation on display. The panic began to rise as she thought of months more of the bickering, tattling, teasing, messes, she realized a sneaky Twinkie wasn’t going to be enough of a fix.

“I need a minute!” She called out before shutting and locking her bedroom door, closing away the shrieking that started again when he had touched her toys to clean them up. She plopped onto the edge of the mattress and gripped it tightly to hold herself upright. Her eyes heavy with sleep, she felt so tired her brain swirled. She inhaled through her nose, held for five seconds before releasing the air through clenched teeth. It was one of the few things she had learned in therapy that helped.

She thought of her own mother with envy and wonderment. What had she done all day? Back when she opened the front door as soon as the dew had dried, and questioned, in or out?

Out. They always picked out, that's where their friends were. Summer days with her sister and the six other kids from the neighborhood. Their time was filled with Super Soakers, Slip ‘N Slide, and Skip-its.

There was a tree in the backyard with random bits of lumber hammered into its trunk. She would climb into it’s branches, a prime hide-and-seek spot. From the thickest branch, a chain dangled with an old truck tire attached. Even when she was alone, she could push off against bark over and over again as she swung out and away at odd angles.

They would gather for impromptu games. Flag football, baseball, water fights, kick the can, red light/green light. They jumped rope. Played cops and robbers. And when it came to cops, they policed themselves. They were unattended, left to figure out life and resolve conflicts without intervention. For the most part, they did. Even the kid they were mean to was included more times than not. When he got too annoying, they would say he couldn’t play anymore; they assumed he went home and chose inside. But he would be back the next day, in the fold.

With a couple of dollars in their pockets, they would walk the couple of blocks up to the 7-11 for a snack or browse the pogs in the card shop. On the days when they had more, they would ride their bikes to McDonald’s and get a cheeseburger and a 50-cent ice cream, they could play in the colorful tubes for hours, climbing, sliding, hiding, it was a time before all the ball pits had disappeared out of fear for what was lurking at the bottom. On the way home, they could stop at the video store and rent a movie for the night.

When they were bored, they stood at the end of the street and shot cap guns at the passing cars. The red plastic discs filled with a tiny smattering of gunpowder, exploding. There was no worry or concern about what the children were doing, even from the passing drivers, and ultimately, that was the problem. The neglect was heavy.

She heard on the evening news about the kids who went missing. A little girl was snatched while waiting for the ice cream truck; the only thing ever found of her was her pink bike, the wheels still spinning, in the street. She knew to always stay with someone, the buddy system they called it, preached it like the gospel. There wasn’t any sunscreen. There were so many unattended injuries. She thought 14-year-old who twice tried to lure her to his bedroom when she was only eight. Even that she handled on her own, kicked him squarely where she was supposed to and didn’t even think of mentioning it to an adult. But what if she hadn’t? Lifelong trauma in exchange for freedom?

Still, she wished she could give them just one good day of summer without the risk.

“Mom?” She heard the mental dorknob rattle a bit, and her eyes swung to the clock on the nightstand. The dull glow of the white numbers revealed that four minutes had passed. Three more than she had asked for. Her fingers slid beneath her glasses and squeezed the bridge of her nose, then pressed into her tearducts as she stood. She inhaled deeply again.

Opening the door, she stared down at them in the hall. His eyes were wide and expectant, with a mouth slightly agape because the adult teeth that had recently grown in were still too big for his face. His lips came together momentarily to swallow before asking, “What are we doing today?”

She exhaled into a tight smile and replied, "I haven’t decided yet, help me come up with a plan.”