The Way Summer Ought To Be

by Sophie

School's been out for a couple of weeks and I'm crazy thrilled to have my kids home. I'm not so thrilled about all the driving, arranging, scheduling...the sports camps, the music camps, the reading ahead for fall semester...not even about the charitable project one of the kids is doing (yeah, yeah, yeah, it builds character - um, mine. Moms ought to get the f'ing Eagle badge or whatever it is, just for getting through all the nagging and prodding and encouraging without turning to drink. It is ironic that the project involves something called a "Peace Pole"...conversations about its completion date are far from peaceful...)

When I was a kid, summer was a do-it-yourself affair. My mom didn't work, but I don't believe it ever occured to her that it was her responsibility to amuse us. The first she expected to see of us was dinner, as long as we got our chores done.

Needless to say, that led to a certain amount of creativity.


My favorite summer project was one I undertook with my brother. Mike made a brick mold out of scrap wood, and we started turning out bricks made from Missouri clay dirt. While we waited them to harden to a construction-ready consistency, we got some of the neighbor kids to help us dig a hole in the woods next to our house. If you're familiar with midwestern soil, you'll know that excavating sufficient rocks, roots, and clay and shale deposits to create a hole big enough for four kids to crouch in was a considerable effort. Our fingernails stayed black and our bare feet built up calluses that would send any self-respecting manicurist screaming. Many days later, we were ready to cover the thing with an old piece of drywall boosted from some dad's workshop. We made a bunch of Ritz-and-peanut-butter sandwiches and hunkered down there waiting for the apocalypse.

Drywall isn't really good for exterior walls, as the next storm proved. The bricks - whose possible use eluded us - melted back into mud. We found something else to do.

Fast forward to 2009. I'm knocking myself out to meet my deadlines while my kids turn to Resident Evil Five for company and wait for me to get hungry enough to take them to Subway. Meanwhile, on the other coast, the Best Niece Ever has found her way back to summer as it was meant to be, summer filled with imagination and magic and stories in her head.

Evidently she took a long look at her dad's Shamus plaque and thought to herself....well, this is what she thought up:



And her dad didn't help. He just....let it happen, like parents from the Olden Days.

Today's report from my brother is that my nephew now wants to get in on the action. "The pistol inspired him to make his own: 24 lego handguns, in various colorful colors. He then lined them up on the front windowsill and announced that he was opening his own gunshop."

Ooooh....I'm getting a little misty. Now that's what summer ought to be.