Slow Down, Summer

The days are long, but their childhood is short.

There’s a certain kind of quiet that settles into the house when the school year ends. Not silence exactly, because a house with three kids is anything but quiet, but a pause. The pace shifts, the mornings stretch out, and the calendar loosens its grip.

I look forward to summer with my kids every year. Not because there’s less to be held accountable for, but because it’s ours. It’s the time I get them back, not just after school hours, not just tired and worn out from a full day—but fully present all day, right here at home.

School years are a blur. The days start early and move fast. I feel like I’m always saying “hurry up” or “we’re going to be late.” I lose count of how many permission slips I forget to sign, or how often I look at the clock and wonder how it’s already bedtime again. I miss them even when they’re right in front of me, because we’re constantly moving.

But summer? Summer lets us slow down.

I look forward to mornings without alarms. When nobody has to get dressed right away, and breakfast can take an hour if it needs to. When we can all just sit on the couch, still in pajamas, and talk about absolutely nothing. I look forward to long afternoons without a schedule—going to the park, making slime, and digging through bins of toys and whatnot that haven’t been touched in months.

The days aren’t always easy. There’s fighting and whining, and moments when I want to hide in the bathroom just for five minutes of peace. But even on the hard days when I feel like pulling my hair out, there’s a kind of closeness that summer gives us. Even when the house is loud, cluttered, and crazy, I still feel like we’re a little more connected.

I look forward to sitting on the back porch in the evenings with a cold, iced tea in my hands, watching them and the dogs run around like lunatics through the yard. The way they smell like sunscreen. The piles of wet towels by the back door, and sticky hands from eating popsicles on the porch after an afternoon swim. I look forward to the way time seems to blur a little at night, when the sun stays up longer, and so do we. I love the feeling of not needing to rush them to bed, of letting the night stretch out just a bit longer, because there’s no alarm waiting for us in the morning.

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I look forward to not being pulled in a hundred directions, to just letting the days be what they are.

Summer for us means barbecuing every Sunday and ending each day with a quick game or a family movie. Jenga, Uno, and Spot It are the kids’ go-tos. We almost always end up passed out on the couch together for a bit, until my husband and I wake up and figure out who’s helping who up to bed.

Once a week, we head to our daughter's swim meets. The air stays warm and sticky late into the night. The scent of fresh-cut grass, chlorine, and burgers on the grill drifts through the air. It means late-night pizza dinners at the country club and mingling with other swim team parents while the kids chase each other through the grass.

Around this time every year, we plan a trip to California to escape the Arizona heat. We load up the car with the kids and dogs and head out for a week-long vacation filled with theme parks and long, lazy hours at the beach. Belmont Park at Mission Beach is one of our favorite places to go as a family. We snack on cotton candy and Dole Whip while challenging each other in the arcade. Every year, I notice they’re a little taller and able to go on more rides without me, and it’s a not-so-subtle reminder that these days we get to spend together are fleeting.

I know this time won’t last. They’re growing faster than I’m ready for. If you really think about how many summers we get with our kids, it's about eighteen. That’s the number we’re handed when they’re born. Eighteen summers where they’re mostly ours, give or take. And that number gets smaller every year. Some are already behind us. Some we barely noticed because we were too damn tired to take it all in. And some, like the ones happening now, feel like a quiet countdown.

Eighteen summers until they'll no longer look forward to spending those long days at home, or look forward to our family roadtrips to California. One day, they might have summer jobs and friends they’d rather be with, and I’ll look back on these crazy, loud, wonderful summers with a lump in my throat. So while I have them here, while they still ask me to watch, to play, to go outside with them—I want to be present for it all. I want to be the one who’s there when they look back and remember what their summers felt like.

Warm, safe, and wonderfully full of memories that we all made together.

I try not to complain about my kids being home over the summer, even though most days can be a little exhausting. I look forward to it because this time is so precious. For a little while, we get to hit pause on everything else happening in life and just be together while they're still kids.

I don’t think there’s anything more important than that, and I’m determined to make every little moment of it count. So summer, please… slow down.