As a parent, I often have to judge whether things are good. Is the popular movie good for my children? Is our sunscreen good for the environment? Is buy-one-get-one-half-off a good deal? And most important, is the lump of cheddar I found wrapped in foil in the back of the refrigerator behind the pitcher of used-to-be-juice still good?
Not surprisingly, the answers do not always fit into neat ‘yes’ or ‘no’ compartments. After all, mold can be sliced away from cheese.
Lately, I have been considering the merits of summer. Is it good or bad? If you were to ask me in late May, amid the barrage of school-end activities, grading deadlines and volunteer assignments, I would say summer is definitely good. At that point, nothing sounds better than lounging at Sycamore Pool for hours while munching farmer’s market produce and carefully sliced cheddar. But by the end of July, temperatures that rarely dip below three digits cause me to reverse my opinion and I do not hesitate to say summer is bad.
The novelty of sleeping late and living virtually schedule free wears off after a while. The scorching sun renders the bikes, scooters and skates useless. My kids too frequently resort to movies and video games, and I begin to hear those pitiful words, “I’m bored.”
Fortunately, our summers are usually punctuated by family trips and outings, and these go a long way in relieving the monotony. However, road trips are always accompanied by four even more pitiful words: “Are we there yet?”
I believe OB nurses implant odometer chips into babies at the time of birth. The chips are programmed to begin functioning after children have mastered verbal expression, but before they have mastered basic arithmetic. Every two and a half minutes the chip prompts children to ask whether those same two and a half minutes have in fact concluded the journey. Parental responses start out informative and calm, then gradually degenerate to vague and seething.
Are we there yet occurrence number 3: “No, sweetie, the sign we just passed said we have 492 miles to go. We’re going 70 miles per hour. That means we’ll be driving for about another seven hours.”
Are we there yet occurrence number 19: “Remember how I said we’d be driving for seven hours? Well, that was less than an hour ago.”
Are we there yet occurrence number 57: [through clenched teeth] “Look. More cows.”
This year, in a brilliant attempt to preempt odometer chip crises, I created road trip notebooks for my two older children. Filled with coloring pages, puzzles, camp song lyrics, journal prompts, instructions for making cootie catchers, and more, the notebooks were a goldmine of wholesome entertainment. Each notebook’s crowning inclusion was a detailed map of our trip route so that queries of ‘are we there yet’ could be directed to the information at the children’s fingertips.
I was very proud of my creations. They worked beautifully. Well, beautifully for about 300 out of the 800 miles we drove to Utah for a recent family wedding. My heart sank a little when, on a potty stop somewhere around Lovelock, I noticed one of the trip route maps crushed into the floor mat under a layer of used-to-be-Cheez-its. This would not do.
When I returned to the car I resolved that my creations would not go under used. So, on the duration of the trip, I colored three exotic animals and five earth fairies, made two cootie catchers, played seven games of paper Battle Ship, completed six word searches, and led the car in several rousing verses of “The cutest boy I ever saw was sipping cider through a straw.”
The wedding was lovely, the road trip went better than expected, and being united with far away family members proved worth the trouble. Now we are back to sleeping late, lounging around at One Mile and looking forward to the start of a new school year.
In considering whether summer is good or bad, I asked my children their opinions. My seven year old son, who recently expressed the wish that he had gills, said summer is good. My ten year old daughter, who has an intense and inexplicable preference for long sleeve shirts, said summer is bad.
But I would be willing to bet that when their new pencils shorten and the knees of their school jeans thin out a bit, they’ll remember with fondness the hours we lounged, the miles we drove, the songs we sang. And before we know it, we’ll all be saying about summer 2010 “Are we there yet?”
