Depleted

My family is sick lately.

We’re not usually sick – we get regular flu shots and for the most part, we’re all rather healthy, even in the middle of flu and cold season. No one has severe allergies or any sort of “-itis” or medical condition. We’re really lucky like that.

But something shifted late last week.

My younger daughter has been a little out-of-sorts, crying, upset. My middle daughter collapsed from a mild case of heat stroke on a Sunday hike (she’s fine, thankfully, just needed a lot of R&R and water) and missed most of her classes on Monday.  My oldest daughter, already in pain from the final rigorous phase of her last month of wearing braces, felt like she was going to black out this morning and collapsed into a catatonic heap on my bed before school.

I wondered aloud to my husband, What is going on?

He didn't have to answer. I feel it, too.

We’re depleted, plain and simple. Depleted of the energy required to go through the motions of a regular schedule. Sick of waking up early and running and working all day long, only to have hours of homework after school (when they should be outside, playing, enjoying the real, natural world). Ready for the unstructured freedom of summer.

What is it about the sun that makes our minds wander?

At the start of every school year – or, really, a month into it, around October – we’re ready for the structure and discipline of winter. It seems as though the cold weather inspires a nose-to-the-grindstone attitude, followed by the rewards of winter holidays and New Year celebrations. And just past the new year, we have a plethora of faux-holiday days off that keep our stamina up. But after Spring Break, it’s all about the last few months of school, the “final push before summer.”

But still, I hate it.

This morning after I dropped Serena off at school, I watched Emme sleeping in her bed, mouth open slightly, dreaming, her braces enjoying their final weeks in her mouth.

It won’t always be like this, a voice inside my head admonished. Someday in the very near future, my little ducklings will have to finish up their little lives here with me and go off in search of their own paths. And at that time, will any of this rigor matter? What will missed homework and sick days and even school itself mean?

Again, I know the answer. 

Not much.

Watching Emme sleep, I recognized the trap we fall into, believing that we have to do this, or we have to do that. And I was a junkie for good grades and being the best at my job, etc. Just last night (and again this morning on the way to school), I lectured Serena on not falling behind in homework because the due date is several days away (and other homework tends to pile up, on top of it). To tell the truth, I got sick of hearing my own voice lecturing, mostly because I don’t get the point of so much homework.

Is it just me? Or are you feeling depleted too??

Happiness is a Sunny Summer Day at Zuma

...And the Livin's Easy...

One of my husband's legacies for our kids is his love of the band Sublime, the 90s reggae/ska/punk/rock band from Long Beach.  My girls know most of the words to most of their songs and last summer, as a family, we deciphered a lyric from "Garden Grove" that had eluded us ("I got the deuce-deuce in the trunk of my car"... which I had been singing as "Blue's Clues" and Marlowe thought was "doo-doo"... both of which are G-rated compared to Bradley Nowell's .22).  There is a sound in their music that is so uniquely Southern Californian, simultaneously laid-back and in-your-face, like a tatted-up Chicano offering you a coolie from the chest while telling you about his uncle who's doing time.  You're a little scared, but you feel lulled into staying a while.  


Although each of their songs sounds like summer to me, the big daddy of them all is "Doin' Time," which riffs off the old Gershwin son "Summertime" from "Porgy and Bess." When I hear the first strains of it, I can see ice cream trucks rolling through hazy San Gabriel Valley neighborhoods, kids running barefoot through crabgrass, heat rising like a mirage from the asphalt streets. 


Summertime... and the livin's easy...


I've thought of this song over and over since my kids got out of school on the 16th.  As they've shed their school schedules and the weather has warmed up, a lovely hum has taken over our lives.  The clock has slowed down and the mileage on my car has only increased by 8 miles over the past four days.  The lingering hours of daylight have given way to spontaneous pool parties and endless trays of cut-up fruit or popsicles in lieu of real meals. Their friend from down the street has become a 4th sister, and the pack of girls zigzags up and down the hill, from her plum-treed lawn to our pool and back again.  My writing time, which I had thought I'd have to give up by virtue of my kids' very presence in the house, has actually increased.  While they're in the pool, I sit at my table by the window and type, half-listening to their mermaid games and splashes, soaking up the summer sun by osmosis.  Today was their first lemonade stand and I'm sure it will become a neighborhood staple, with its icy sweet ade and dog biscuits. 


Last night, as Raf and I sat in the dusky evening light, I said, "It's been such a good summer."


"It's only been a week," he said, cautioning me that the kids could get bored any minute and the lull of having no real plans could become a living hell with three stir-crazy kids.


And I know that, but let's just take it slow for now.  We've got time.