Summer Stress

I am this turtle.  Both anxious as heck and also incredibly slow and paralyzed by summer.  And wanting to climb into my shell.

The first week of July - done!

I try not to wish away the days in life, so to speak, but enjoy each time for what it is.  On the other hand, summer is an incredibly stressful, anxious, overwhelming, hot, humid time of my calendar year so...I'm counting the days.

Once everyone else is firmly ensconced in public school again, and the vacationers have fled cottage country, then I feel as if I can take a deep breath and start to live freely once more.  The air is cooler, the pressure to Have A Fun Summer !!!!!  is gone, the excitement of a new school year is starting up, and just generally everything is much happier and calmer and nicer.

I'm very sensitive to the 'fun summer' intensity, which hits me as hard as some people seem to be pressured to have excellent, amazing vacations.  I've been thinking a lot about it and here's why I think that is:

1) I'm in Canada, at a latitude where winter is long and harsh and dark and the summer is hot and damp and very light out.  For some people this might indicate a propensity towards seasonal affective disorder; in me it's the total opposite - Summer Affective Disorder.  Thoughts include "Oh my goodness there are only two months of summer I have to make them count!" and "Stuff exciting plans into every space they might fit before it's too late!" and "You are failing to make happy memories!!"  Oddly enough, winter is pretty chill and relaxing.  It's hard to feel pressured to do much when the sun sets at 4pm and it's -35C outside.

2) I'm a homeschooler, so I spend a lot of time planning lessons and executing lessons and explaining lessons and, and, and.  School is my focus.  There isn't school in the summer.  The children want a vacation and I can't blame them.  I'm adrift in a sea of uselessness but also a nice frisson of invigorating panic underlying it all as I prepare for the next school year.  This is sarcasm - I'm not invigorated by the panic.

3) The things we 'have' to do are all around summer.  Pretty much all of them.  My tension starts with filing taxes in the Spring and ends with hosting the Women's Conference at our church at the end of September, but in between those two bookends are all the meetings, expected trips, visiting, 'vacations', etc.  We have to go to conference.  We have to get to the Big City to visit Grandma.  We have to get to family camp.  We have to get to this other meeting over here!  David has to go to this conference in Ohio.  We have to volunteer at Canada Day.  Etc.

4) I live far from family, so there are Expectations.  Further to the above point, even if nothing is said there is a sense of expectation to summer visiting.  That we will make it to family, to spend time there.  Even if we can't.  When my parents lived on the East Coast it would have taken at least two full days of driving to get there and so we never visited them at all.  I felt guilty about this every summer - I SHOULD get in a car that barely runs and drive for twenty four hours and see them!  I SHOULD!

5)  More expectations!  That we will attend family camp like we have in previous years and that it will be amazing and the children will LOVE IT and make so many happy memories.  That we will get our family picture taken again and it will be wonderful and everyone will be so happy.  That we will visit the beach as often as humanly possible, even though it means taking time off work, because that's what parents do when they want their kids to be happy.  That we will spend $10 several times a week at the ice cream store in town.  That we will shell out for soccer gear so the kids can all play soccer, which we will sign them up for in the next town over because our town has decided they don't host teams anymore.  And also baseball.  And also day camp!  That we will host guests at our home.  That we will have bonfires.  That we will take time off from work to do 'fun things!' like...who knows!  FUN THINGS DARN IT.

6)  It's hot, and humid, which is horrible and gross and everything is damp or rotting and the bugs.  The. Bugs.  No one can sleep even with heavy curtains because it isn't dark until, like, 10pm.  And even when it IS dark it is so blasted hot no one can sleep anyway.  The splinters in hands and feet, the bug bites, the sunburns (I forgot to put sunscreen on ears!  They will get skin cancer and it is all my fault!), the blisters, the heat rashes, the cuts, the bruises from falling off bikes, the endless begging for popsicles and drinks of water (What if they are dehydrated!!!???), the headaches from heat and lack of sleep, the stomachaches from heat and lack of sleep, the grouchiness from heat (What if everyone gets heat stroke!!??) and lack of sleep, the yelling after people to put on a hat.

7)  The MONEY.  Hundreds of dollars for camp fees and sports fees and spontaneous trips to air conditioned movie theatres and hot dogs from chip trucks and the ridiculously priced flea medication I have to give the cat every month so he DOESN'T get fleas (I mean, is it made of GOLD??) and the car maintenance I insist on because if you're driving a thousand round trip kilometres you want to make sure the widget doesn't implode or whatever happens to cars that makes them stop moving forward in a timely manner.

8) All the pictures and reminders of other people 'doing fun things in the summer'.  A long litany of people's camping pictures and camp pictures and photo essays on the glory that is canoeing somewhere and doing fun fantastic stuff in remote and glorious locales.  "Are WE going there, mom?"  "No.  We're not going there."  "Why NOT?!  Doesn't it look fun!!??"

9)  The sheer amount of time and mental space it takes to do things when you are pushing through a heavy fog of anxiety all day long.  The week long cleaning and list making and packing necessary to go away for two days with everyone in tow.  The budgeting.  The trying to keep things at a reasonable level of clean when three children, having a 'fun summer' are spending a lot of time dumping a mixture of bubble solution and purple juice and mud all over your floor every moment of the day.  Trying to find a movie everyone will agree on so that they will stay out of the heat from noon until 2, at least.  Trying to find an SPF60 sunscreen that people say doesn't cause cancer.

So I suppose it makes sense that I'm tense in the summer, what with hemorrhaging money and feeling this panicked sense of Required Fun Times, especially in terms of giving the kids a "Nice Summer".

Do you know what I did as a kid in the summer?  Mostly read books.  I don't remember where I got the books because we certainly didn't have the finances to just be buying books constantly, even if we'd had a bookstore right near the house, which we also didn't have.  But I still remember books and I do faintly also recall a travelling bookmobile so perhaps some of them came from there?  I also remember being outside a lot, running through the sprinkler, making forts in the backyard, picking flowers.  There were sometimes trips to a public park that involved getting to swim in the outdoor pool.  This was not frequent but greatly looked forward to.  My parents sometimes barbequed things outside, mostly hamburgers if I remember correctly.  Very occasionally chicken or steak or something.  Once a summer we went out of the city for a week or two and traveled up to the family cottage, used by all our family, and stayed there as a vacation.

If my parents felt any sort of pressure to provide me with a fun summer they certainly didn't show it.  My father worked, and that didn't change over the summer, and my mother stayed home, and that didn't change over the summer.  We had essentially the exact same life as during the school year except that we didn't have anything like school to go to.  I always enjoyed the return of the school year because I could see my friends again and have a plan for the day.