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Surviving Summer

July 17, 2018 | Jennifer Batchelor

At 2:18 p.m. last Thursday, I came to an unpopular conclusion: summer is kind of terrible. I know I was literally just complaining about May and all the end-of-school-year craziness so maybe I have contentment issues, but nevertheless I firmly stand by my assessment.

I work part-time from home, averaging around 15-20 hours in a given week. From August to May, I have childcare that totals … roughly 15-20 hours. Matches up nicely, doesn’t it? Ten months of the year, it really is like having the best of both worlds. My work gets done, my kids learn things, and our schedule still has plenty of time for unstructured fun.

But then school ends, all that lovely childcare evaporates, and what was once the best is now the worst. I don’t make enough money to justify the cost of summer camps, so I’m stuck cobbling together a patchwork of reasonably-priced and free child supervision options. 

We live on a quiet street that we love, populated mostly by elderly widows (and one very in-demand widower), but during the summer I long for one of those big, multi-hundred-house subdivisions where I could just turn my children loose at the end of the cul-de-sac to play with a whole crew of similarly-aged kids. Alas, our neighborhood skews considerably older and since my kids’ bridge-playing skills are nil, I’m scouring community Facebook groups for every free event out there.

Speaking of, how many Vacation Bible Schools would you say is too many? Five would be pushing it, right?

Despite what I manage to splice together, I end up working a not-insignificant amount with my kids around. Or attempting to work would probably be more accurate, since I’m asked to fix a snack, find a toy, arbitrate a disagreement, and if I’m done and it’s time to go to the pool yet, roughly every four minutes.

Even just trying to write this essay; I mean, okay, fine, it’s partially my fault because it’s raining and I should definitely know better than to attempt to work on a rainy day in the summer. But the deadline was like, yesterday, so I tell the kids to go play for a bit while mom works.

Three sentences later, my seven-year-old, Nathan, is back.

“Mom, can we play Quidditch in the house?”

“What does that entail?” I ask. Suspicious.

“Well, I’ll be the Beater and Ellie will be the Chaser, and I’m gonna be trying to hit her with these (he indicates the assortment of not-very-soft-looking balls filling his arms), but don’t worry, I won’t throw them very hard or anything.”

“Uh, that’s a hard no, bud. No wizarding games in the house. Why don’t you two watch something?”

“No thanks, Mom. I’d rather play.” If you’re curious about how often I’m using screen time to get my work done, the answer is apparently more than my children can bear. Which I didn’t even know was a thing but there you have it.

And I know. I know I need to be soaking up this time. That they’ll only be 4 and 7 once and thanks to that viral essay I read the other day, I’m now very aware that we only have 11 more summers left with Nathan before he goes off to college, and we should be carpe-ing all the diems between now and then and building magical memories that he’ll treasure forever because one day my house will be quiet and empty and I’ll miss them terribly.

Just stop it. You had me at “quiet and empty house.”

On Monday, my husband left for a work trip of an indeterminate length of time.

“My return flight is booked for Wednesday, but I could be gone the rest of the week,” he said as packed five days’ worth of clothes in his carry-on bag. His travel coincides with our babysitter’s vacation, and suddenly I’m staring down an entire week with no scheduled childcare and I groan, thinking of the begging, pleading, and bribing that will take place as I try to string together consecutive minutes of work.

Maybe I could try to be the fun, adventurous mom for a day? As if somehow knocking it out the park today will earn me compliant, quiet children for the rest of the week. This may be utter nonsense, but it’s the best hand I have to play, so I pack a backpack with water, snacks, and sunscreen and tell the kids to get their shoes on.

“Come on guys! Let’s go on a surprise adventure!” I say with mock enthusiasm in my voice.

“Yes! That sounds awesome, Mom!” Nathan’s response is genuinely enthusiastic, because he is my eternal optimist.

I load everyone in the car, and we set off for the park across town with a walking trail that circles the lake. Naturally, we hit gridlock traffic at 10 a.m. on the outskirts of Nashville. I check my Waze app.

“Multi-car crash reported ahead. Estimated wait time in traffic, 40 minutes.”

Splendid. Then a voice from the backseat.

“Uh, Mom? Does the place we’re going adventuring have a bathroom?”

I quickly cut across all five lanes of traffic to take the last exit before the point of no return. Ten minutes later we’re back on track and 30 minutes after that, we’re parking in the last empty spot in the lot next to the visitor’s center.

We easily locate the lake trail and set off, the kids scampering ahead of me. Their speed lasts for approximately 72 seconds, and then they need water and a snack. I’m handing them Ziploc bags of goldfish when a park ranger appears out of nowhere.

“I’m sorry,” he says, although if he sounds sorry about anything, it’s how many times a day he has to utter this phrase. “This is a no snack trail.” A no snack trail? What fresh hell is this?

The snacks go back in the backpack, and my children’s interest in adventure disappears simultaneously. They are hot. It’s too far. Their feet are sleepy. I forge on for 20 minutes, no longer seeking fun but only to tire them out. When we finally turn around, Ellie collapses into the dirt. Her legs no longer work, she tells me. She needs a shoulder ride.

With Ellie on my shoulders and Nathan whining about why he has to be too big to be carried, we plod onward. After what feels like an eternity, we can see the parking lot. The end is near, and I sigh with relief. A woman with very blonde hair and very tanned legs is walking toward us. I offer her a smile and a nod as we move to the side of the path to let her pass when she stops me.

“How far is it to the lake?” she asks. She gestures to her feet, in flip flops, and explains she’s wondering if she needs different footwear. Who starts walking down a path into the woods in flip flops, I wonder. But I answer her question.

“Oh not far, maybe five minutes?”

“Great; thanks,” she says. I turn to continue down the short path to the parking lot. So close. Blonde Hair Tan Legs doesn’t move. She starts explaining that she’s been in town for CMA Fest, Nashville’s annual country music festival. She tells me how much her tickets cost and where she sat at every single show and that she wanted to see a bit of nature before flying back home to Arizona. Did I know that it got to 120 degrees in the summer there? But that’s a dry heat, of course; nothing like this awful humidity we have here.

“I just don’t know how you stand it,” she says, shaking her head.

All of my clothes are sticking to my body. Ellie feels like she weighs 400 pounds instead of 40. Our cheeks are flushed, our hairlines are damp, and our water bottles are nearly empty after walking—at a very leisurely pace, I might add—for a mere 45 minutes. You’re preachin’ to the choir here, lady.

“Yep, it’s pretty miserable.” Agreement seems the best way to keep moving down the path toward my car. “Well, enjoy your walk.” She still doesn’t move.

“Everyone here is so nice and helpful; that Southern hospitality really is everything you hear it is. But, just between you and me,” she says, as she leans closer. I step back. ”You can’t all be as nice as you seem, right?”

“You can be nice to anyone for five minutes,” I shrug. “That’s the way most of us see it, anyway.”

Suddenly she seems to notice Ellie and Nathan for the first time and proceeds to inquire about their names and ages. Are you going to have more kids, she wants to know. Or are you done because you have one of each?

Geez lady. If you must know, that’s actually a pretty fraught subject because I want another kid and my husband doesn’t and we’ve done several months of couples’ counseling to move past it, but gosh it’s kind of you, complete stranger, to pry in this way whilst I have 40 lbs of four year old on my shoulders.

But, because it’s only been about 4 minutes and 30 seconds, I don’t say any of that. Instead I fake chuckle and say no, my shoulders can’t accommodate any more kids right now.

Finally, blessedly, she moves on and we make it back to the car. I turn the air conditioning on full blast, and Ellie is asleep before we hit the interstate. Which means she won’t nap when we get home, and I’ll spend the afternoon trying to get work done between getting out the PlayDoh, putting up the PlayDoh, and scraping the PlayDoh off my kitchen floor.

I keep telling myself that, come September, I’ll find my days are strangely quiet and that I actually kind of miss my constant sidekicks. Because I will. I might not love summer in the middle of it but I do love having summered. After a month of our regularly-scheduled activities this fall, the frustration and panic I felt for 10 weeks will ebb and all I’ll be able to recall is catching lightning bugs in the backyard, Ellie learning to swim, Nathan reading an entire Harry Potter book all by himself, and the day we hiked around the lake. It’s not the work that will stick with me but the moments I fight to cram in between the work, and, come September, that will be all kinds of beautiful and profound.

But right now it’s July, and I just heard about another VBS that sounds fantastic.

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In Perspective Tags summer, working from home
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I leaned towards the window to get a better look at a plaid pair of ankle pants. I studied the pattern and wondered if they’d look cute with an Irish cable-knit fishermen’s sweater Jesse gave me for Christmas years ago. I didn’t get a chance to wear it that often when we were in the DC area, and the weather never got as cold as it does in the Midwest. I shook my foot rapidly while Cara read, and I stared at those ankle pants. I should get rid of that sweater, I thought. After all, minimalist wardrobes are all the rage: only keep what you love. If you haven’t worn it in several years, toss it.
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I hadn’t worn that sweater in years, this is true, but thinking about throwing it out made me sad. I could remember the morning Jesse gave it to me. We were living in South Bend, and he was a graduate student at the University of Notre Dame.  He told me the story behind the sweater—that each pattern is unique to the fisherman so that if he drowns at sea, he can be identified. I thought about a wife sitting by a fire, knitting a sweater for her husband, a pattern designed for him so if she stands next to his lifeless body one day, she can point out the cable and twist stitches down the center, the rib stitch she decided on at the last moment for the sleeves. “This is mine,” she would say, running her fingers over the yarn that was once a pile on her kitchen floor while her husband sat nearby humming “The Night Visiting Song.”
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Maybe I’d wear that sweater again someday. It would look cute with those ankle pants. I began to imagine reading my Erasmus paper in that outfit at a writing conference, perhaps the Festival of Faith and Writing in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I would look fantastic, and I would express something about The Praise of Folly that nobody had thought of before.
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// From "Lessons in Folly (an excerpt from Twirl)" by @calliefeyen, new on C+C today. Link in profile.

Currently reading:

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I leaned towards the window to get a better look at a plaid pair of ankle pants. I studied the pattern and wondered if they’d look cute with an Irish cable-knit fishermen’s sweater Jesse gave me for Christmas years ago. I didn’t get a chance to wear it that often when we were in the DC area, and the weather never got as cold as it does in the Midwest. I shook my foot rapidly while Cara read, and I stared at those ankle pants. I should get rid of that sweater, I thought. After all, minimalist wardrobes are all the rage: only keep what you love. If you haven’t worn it in several years, toss it.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
I hadn’t worn that sweater in years, this is true, but thinking about throwing it out made me sad. I could remember the morning Jesse gave it to me. We were living in South Bend, and he was a graduate student at the University of Notre Dame.  He told me the story behind the sweater—that each pattern is unique to the fisherman so that if he drowns at sea, he can be identified. I thought about a wife sitting by a fire, knitting a sweater for her husband, a pattern designed for him so if she stands next to his lifeless body one day, she can point out the cable and twist stitches down the center, the rib stitch she decided on at the last moment for the sleeves. “This is mine,” she would say, running her fingers over the yarn that was once a pile on her kitchen floor while her husband sat nearby humming “The Night Visiting Song.”
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Maybe I’d wear that sweater again someday. It would look cute with those ankle pants. I began to imagine reading my Erasmus paper in that outfit at a writing conference, perhaps the Festival of Faith and Writing in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I would look fantastic, and I would express something about The Praise of Folly that nobody had thought of before.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
// From "Lessons in Folly (an excerpt from Twirl)" by @calliefeyen, new on C+C today. Link in profile.
The plan for the weekend was to worship, listen to speakers, and be together as a community. The only problem: child care was no longer available. After spending two full mornings tucked away in a separate room for the kids to be loud in, I break down into tears. I feel alone. I long for a physical second body. One to share responsibilities with. Mentally and physically I am drained.
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I walk outside to get some fresh air. The only place to sit is a cold metal bench facing a dreary pond. I look to my left and see two canoes. Not one person has dared take them into the green water while we’ve been here. Built to hold people while floating on water, instead they sit upside down on a piece of wood. I feel like the canoes: unnoticed and not living to my potential. Tears fall down my face.
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I don’t understand why I’m still single, I think to myself. I know I am being the best mama to my daughter that I can be, but I also feel I am missing out on something beautiful: a complete family. I long to be loved.
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A couple weeks later, I sprint around the house early one morning. My daughter is sleeping and I am already late for work. Again. With only one shoe on, running around like a madwoman, I  look for my lunch box. It is nowhere to be found.
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My daughter wakes up just in time.
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“What are you looking for, Momma?”
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“My lunch box.” I reply.
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“Oh! Hold on,” she says with utter excitement.
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She crawls out of bed, stumbles into the living room and comes back with my lunch box.
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“Here you go Momma, I made your lunch for you last night!”
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I peek inside the lunchbox to see all of her plastic play food in there. My heart bursts with pure joy.
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We head our way to the car to repeat another day.
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Turns out there is love for me after having a baby. I was just looking in all the wrong places. She was right in front of me the entire time.
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// #ccfreewrite by #exhalecreativity member @woodyface #loveafterbabies
Now, I have breastfed all three of my babies. I am a supporter, even an advocate, for breastfeeding, and I certainly don’t adhere to the notion that a mother must hide herself in a private back room, missing out on sunshine, conversation, or dinner in order to feed her baby. I have nursed my children in all sorts of unusual places—Chick-fil-A, church pews, formal New Year’s Eve parties, and an Eli Young Band concert. More often than not, it is my personal preference to use a cover up, but desperate times called for desperate boob-exposing measures. I wasn’t about to go sit in my hot van for 30 minutes to nurse a baby. This mama ain’t got time for that.
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I proceeded to shop as the suckle, suckle, swallow sound drowned out the cart’s squeaky wheels. I casually scanned produce and peeked inside an egg carton, acting as if this was my norm. I’m just the kind of mom who goes on about life with a baby attached to her nipple for all to see. No big deal. At first I avoided eye contact with other shoppers, particularly with the middle aged man who happened to need the same tub of Greek yogurt at the exact moment I bent over to grab mine. When I saw him lingering near the sweet potatoes and sneaking glances, I pulled down on my son’s chin, attempting to widen his latch and hide more of my breast. His mouth slipped off for a moment, and I’m pretty sure the man saw my boob. Welcome to motherhood.
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But a funny thing happened by the time I reached aisle four; I felt confident, almost proud. I felt like a mom. As it turns out, the past five years have produced a mom who knows what she’s doing every now and then.
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// From "The Man in Aldi Saw My Boob" by guest writer @joybellsbecker, new on C+C today. Link in profile
Birth exposes you in ways you’re not expecting, and I don’t just mean the most private areas of your body, which are exposed to a room full of medical professionals. It exposes your heart, too. Never before have I been so incapable of hiding my innermost feelings; the love for my newborn son, the fear for my ruined body, the awareness of the fragility of life. My husband saw me at my weakest, in every possible way. Now, six weeks later, I feel exposed. Vulnerable. Naked. What if this experience has completely changed how he feels about me?
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My doctor gave me the green light to resume normal activity. I’m healed, she says. But here I am, sitting at a green light, frozen in place. Green light means go, but I’m scared to move forward.
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I take a step closer to the mirror, then shimmy out of my yoga pants and tank top, slipping on the black lace lingerie. Maybe he doesn’t see me the same way. But it’s possible that what he says is true, and after all this, he loves me even more. I want so desperately to trust him and let his reassurances drown out the self-deprecating voice in my head.
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God had to literally knock me off my feet for me to finally let someone see me completely. All I want to do right now is build my walls back up, but I won’t. Isn’t this the whole idea of marriage? Truly seeing someone and loving them anyway? And truly letting yourself be seen and letting yourself be loved?
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Our bedroom door quietly creaks open. I turn toward my husband, my heart racing with fear and anticipation and everything in between. Within seconds, he’s crossed the room, filling the space between us.
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His kiss tells me more than words possibly could.
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// From "Green Light Means Go" by an anonymous guest writer, new on C+C today. Link in profile.
A stack of puzzles sits atop our office desk. Each puzzle has at least one missing piece. We’ve searched couch cushions, rearranged furniture, and moved tables and dressers. We don’t give up, at least not yet; the stack of puzzles attests to that fact. Their presence reminding us to keep looking, to keep hoping to find what is lost.
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I want to tell my husband that our marriage, or our love more aptly, is like those missing puzzle pieces.
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Not necessarily lost for all time, but buried underneath something else.
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I try to remember the excitement and tingle of first love and the joy of being together on long car rides. Those feelings are still there, yet most days I fear they’re buried beneath the rigors and busyness of our day-to-day lives.
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Some days I’ll go to bed without saying goodnight or giving a good night kiss - not because I don’t feel anything, but because I just can’t do one more thing.
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My love lies hidden with the puzzle pieces under the couch.
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The other day, our daughter came running to us both. Cheering and exclaiming, “This, this, this!” as she shows us a puzzle piece. She places it in the missing hole. The puzzle is complete once again.
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She’s cheering, we’re cheering.
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The piece wasn’t lost, just waiting for us to find it. Waiting for us to be surprised by its presence once again.
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There are moments when my feelings of love come bursting forth. I want to cheer, too, like my daughter. “This, this, this. This is the love I know and felt.” I want to jump for joy again and fall into your arms.
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I hope we’ll keep unearthing this love, keep searching for it, for years to come. Leaving pieces of ourselves and this love wherever we go.
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We fit together, you and I.
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We belong together like the one missing piece that can’t be found until you’ve stopped looking for it, and find it suddenly right where you left it.
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// #loveafterbabies #ccfreewrite by #exhalecreativity member Kimberly Knowle-Zeller
"We’ll figure it out." They seem like rote, meaningless words, don’t they? If there’s a continuum from the solid confidence of “A Plan” to the futility of “Grasping at Straws,” “figuring it out” feels like it falls closer to the latter. In the face of fear and uncertainty about things as big and weighty as health and financial stability, it’s a solution so nebulous and ambiguous that it should fall flat upon delivery. Instead it has provided courage, absolution, and comfort by turn.
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Why?
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I can’t be sure, but I think it’s the “we” that makes the difference. My fear and shame is Jon’s. His worry and anxiety is mine. It’s not just my stuff to work through or his to deal with. It’s ours, and I’m learning that it’s just as much an act of love to allow someone else to carry your burdens as it is to be the one who offers to help. We’ll figure it out has become our shorthand for “I’m going to help you carry this and you’re going to let me because of the love between us.”
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It took six months of the tightest budget imaginable, but we figured out quitting my job.
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It took a few extra writing gigs and moving some money from savings, but we figured out the credit card bill.
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And it took two weeks of tests, but I was sitting in the doctor’s office with Jon when we found out that his heart is fine—the irregularities are harmless and nothing to worry about.
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After 10 years of marriage, we’ve learned there are times for plans and research and arguments and spreadsheets. And then there are times to close the computer, stop debating, and make the call. There are my battles, his battles, and the ones we fight together, guarding each other’s weak side. There are nights when we stay up for hours, talking through options. And there are nights when the only words we need are "I know." "I understand." "We’ll figure it out."
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// From "We'll Figure It Out" by @jennbatchelor, new on C+C today. Link in profile.

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