Goodbye, July

The summer always seems to end before it begins. Summertime in my mind lasts for about ten weeks, firmly between the end of the school year and the start of a new one. Go into the stores now, and school supplies already line the shelves! Talk about a drag for kids!

This year's summer Sundays are more constrained than usual, due mostly to the fact that (this year) the period of Jewish mourning known as the Three Weeks both begins and ends on a Sunday.Two of the Sundays are Fast Days, and a third is during the even more serious Nine Days. And our upcoming trip starts on a Sunday and ends two Sundays later (more on that in an upcoming post), so there go another three Sundays.

Oh, and those nice still warm Sundays in September? RaggedyDad will be in school all day for two of them, and one of them is the day before Erev Rosh Hashana.

Now that the kids are out of camp, I'm trying to do some summer things with them on my own, since I know our Sundays with RaggedyDad are so limited. Until I was five, on just about every day that the weather allowed it, my mother and I took the bus from Givatayim to the beach in Tel Aviv. So although I am a Very Pale Person, I also feel very much at home at the beach.

Beach air is great (unless someone's smoking near you - yuck), and the Coppertone smells exactly the same as it did when I was eight years old and on a bus to day camp.

Yesterday, we went to the beach in Far Rockaway. Going alone to the beach with three small children, while fun at times, well, I can't really recommend it to anyone sane.




Thankfully, everyone listened, and stayed close, and the baby barely ate any sand, and we sat within spitting distance of lifeguards. But as anyone who has been to the beach, or especially taken kids, it's not the beach time itself that is the challenge. It's the sandy, messy, disastrous clean-up. Despite it all, we had a great, great time. And -- there is no sleep like the sleep after time spent at the beach.

Although the summer is not quite waning yet, when July ends, it reminds me of the poem that ends Alice and Through the Looking Glass:

. . . Echoes fade and memories die
Autumn frosts have slain July
Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes
Children yet, the tale to hear
Eager eye and willing ear,

Lovingly shall nestle near.
In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by
Dreaming as the summers die:
Ever drifting down the stream --
Lingering in the golden gleam --
Life, what is it but a dream?

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

I've missed blogging. I really have. There were so many false starts in my mind, so many things I wanted to say, that just sort of fizzled as they were consumed by the great time sucking forces that invaded for good.

For the past three weeks, Ann, who is turning 5 on Shabbos, and Andy, who is turning 3 in October, have been going to day camp. They're going for the first 'half' of the summer, after which they'll be home for three weeks, and then we'll be away for two weeks visiting RaggedyDad's family.

In my fuzzy, early childhood memories, Hachofesh Hagadol was spent taking the bus from Givatayim to the beach in Tel Aviv, or tagging along as my brothers waged war against the ants in the yard of our apartment building, looking at picture books, and yes, being bored sometimes. I'm attempting to recreate that sense of vast downtime for my kids for the remainder of the summer.

In my imaginary universe, I have a little backyard with a little spot for a plastic pool and some grass. In reality, New York summers are oppressively muggy and hot after 10 a.m., the streets reek of garbage juice, and we live in an upstairs apartment with no balcony or yard space. Hence, camp.

I'm glad that they have been enjoying seeing one another at camp. I'm glad that Andy seems to be doing fine for his four daily hours without me. I'm glad that Ann is, as always, unfazed when she recognizes practically no other kids ("Guess what, Mommy?! Even more kids to be friends with!!")

In the meantime, I've dusted off my grad school textbooks (Okay, it wasn't that long ago. Not that much dust) and I have been teaching reading one-on-one for ten hours a week while my mother watches Little Rag. Whew!

Add that to the usual array of laundry, my quest to serve less processed food to the family (we are really into soups lately), a nearly-one-year-old who still sleeps like a newborn, RaggedyDad bogged down with work and school, extended family drama (for a change), and getting ready for The Trip, and you have a rather raggedy mom.

But I am trying to start writing here again to clear my head and reconnect with my blogging friends. I have been reading (and sometimes commenting) over at most of your places. Thanks for coming back.