Summer Solstice

As any Mom worth her salt knows, summer has little to do with the date on the calendar marked as "first day of summer".  It's all about the date the school shuts and locks its doors.

Since my kids attend two schools, that means two first days of summer in our household.  The first was yesterday, as my youngest walked out of his school doors for the last time as a freshman.

The others will finish up next week, so they still had to trudge off to the bus this morning with heads hung low.

Summer with school-aged children is a funny thing, isn't it?  When we Moms make it to the final stretch, we're nearly as giddy with anticipation as our kids.  We cannot WAIT for school to be over with.  No more begging/pleading/cajoling/demanding on issues of homework, studying, books, papers, projects.  No more dance recitals, play practice, after-school activities.  No more lunch money, lunch-packing, permission slips, field trips, field days, teacher conferences.  We think of long lazy days and watermelon and beaches and pools and the smell of sunblock and the warmth of the sun and good books and roadside stands overflowing with fresh goodies.  Like our kids, we feel FREE.

But then by the end of the summer?  We become just as giddy over the thought of them returning to school.  No more sun-up to sun-down bickering, boredom.  No more messes.  Well, scratch that.  Still plenty of mess, just seven hours less in the day for them to create those messes.  Seven hours less in the day for them to suck every crumb out of your cabinets and yell "There's nothing to eeeeeeeeatt!!!"    We dream of quiet houses, changing the radio station from pop to classic rock, fall leaves, cool weather, sweatshirts and jeans, quiet...

So for me, and probably for most parents, the summer solstice is not about the point at which days go from getting longer to getting shorter or about the beginning of the summer season.  Rather, it is the tipping point of summer break when we go from being glad school is over to counting down the days till it starts back up again.  My solstice typically arrives sometime in late July, but of course that depends very much on how my little angels are behaving.  If they act more like the young adults most of them are, my solstice may never come.  If they carry on like over-sugared 3rd graders at a birthday party, my solstice may very well arrive before summer truly begins.

Here's hoping for a late solstice.

Happy summer, everyone!

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Easter Grass

Not so many years back, our "Easter Eve", if you will, was saturated in tradition. We dyed dozens of eggs, we decorated Easter baskets, we held fantastic Easter egg hunts complete with a gaggle of children scurrying through spring grass searching high and low for what seemed like hundreds of candy-filled eggs, plus the one prized Golden Egg. Finding it was momentous enough to want to add that to a future resume.
























But sigh.  Now all our kids are teenagers.  Teenagers are poopy when it comes to childhood traditions.

Does anyone want to dye eggs?   Nahhh....

Time to get your Easter baskets down from the attic. Is anyone going to decorate theirs? Nahhhh....

And I have to admit, their lackadaisical attitude is contagious.

Did I boil the eggs and set up the cups and Paas? Nahhhh....

Did I set all the basket trimmings and supplies out for them? Nahhh....

About the only thing I insisted on was that they put SOMEthing out on the table. If it wasn't their basket, so be it, but they had to put something out. A shoebox, anything. If they didn't, I threatened to just put a 5 pound bag of Domino's sugar on the table with 6 spoons and bypass the Easter candy altogether.

And some of them kind of met my challenge.  This year a plastic cake saver graces our table, as does a green storage bin from the pantry (I'm afraid to venture into the pantry for fear of finding a bin's worth of Ramen packs or popcorn bags dumped all over the shelf and/or floor).

No one put any Easter grass into their "baskets".  And truth be told I really didn't care.  I started pulling things out of the Walmart bags I had bought only just yesterday and dumping them unceremoniously into the baskets.

No!  I couldn't do it.  I stopped mid-Peter Rabbit on the 5th basket and took everything out.  I rooted through the Easter bin on the floor and found a large plastic bag filled with an assortment of grass from Easters past.  Green, blue, pink, yellow, sparkly, papery, plasticy, iridescent.  All tangled together in a flamboyant rat's nest.  I started tearing handfuls of the stuff and shoving it into the baskets, then giving it a little fluffing.  When I was done there were bits of grass everywhere, including in my hair and down my pajama shirt.

I stood back and surveyed my handiwork..
There now, I thought.  That looks like Easter.

And with a smile on my face I went back to work filling the baskets with chocolates and jelly beans, and all was right with my world.

Although it was made just a bit righter when I popped an M&M in my mouth.



Happy Easter, everyone!!!