The end of the school year brought a lot of tears. I don't ever remember being this sad at the end of the school year, though I realize for these kids -- living overseas -- the end of a school year can represent the ends of friendships, the ends of eras, as friends move, leave country, and depart for different lands.
I remember feeling rather apathetic toward the end of the school year. I didn't really enjoy summer until high school and college, when summers meant long days spent from dawn until well past dusk at the country club pool. Morning swim practice followed by swim lessons, several hours wrestling smelly kids slick with Hawaiian Tropic sunblock, then lifeguarding, praying for the black curtain of thunderclouds to close in so we could crash on the wooden benches in the locker room, then another swim practice. We subsisted largely on "nutrition" provided by the 7-11 across the street: Slurpees, soggy ham subs wrapped in cellophane, columns of Fig Newtons stacked like a game of Jenga.
My favorite summer ever was the summer I stayed in Baltimore between my junior and senior year in college, when seven of us rented a five-bedroom row house on St. Paul St. We shared one A/C window unit between us. By August, we were all sleeping in one room on the floor. I was swimming (always) and lifeguarding, cleaning locker rooms at the Coldspring Country Club, interning at a psychiatric hospital, and writing a screenplay on a borrowed Mac, the first thing I ever wrote that wasn't on a typewriter.
I eventually grew out of summer. You can only lifeguard for so long, and I probably pushed that envelope about as far as I could. Now, summers don't hold any particular joy for me, and they've almost become my least favorite season. I hadn't really thought about it much recently, but it makes me sad to write about the joys summer once held at the same time I write about summers holding little to no joy now.
After Cyprus, the kids have mostly stayed home, playing Monopoly and soccer on the back patio. Most afternoons are spent at the pool. On paper, it isn't a bad summer at all.
When I was in elementary school, my mother worked and so we rotated between a number of summer camps, none of which I remember being particularly fond of. Not even the one my aunt had a hand in running when she was head of Parks & Rec for the town of Lake Park. I think the one at the now-demolished YMCA on Burns Rd. may have been the worst. I tell my kids they are lucky they don't have to go to summer camp, but some days I am not so sure.
The camp selection in Jordan is thin. There is a summer camp offered at my office, but it is glorified daycare at its core and much too expensive for what is provided.
We've only been back from Cyprus for a few weeks, but I think the kids are already getting sick of one another. And though they don't fight constantly, I can tell they are getting on each other's nerves. Elise says it is good for them. Being annoyed by someone, but still have to be in close proximity to them is a life skill...or so she maintains. She jokes, it prepares them well for marriage.
Most of their friends have gone on long summer vacations or back to the States for the summer. Elise and I never really saw the benefit in this. For better or worse, Amman is our home, and we feel the benefits of staying together as a family outweigh the cost of being split apart for three months. If Ramadan falls in the summer months next year, our tune may be different.
Elise and the kids drafted a bucket list of all the things they could do this summer, and Elise has been, for all intents and purposes, running a one-woman summer camp for three over-active kids. But I am unsure as to the long-term sustainability of this endeavor and I fear expensive, sleep-away camps may be coming down the pike one summer soon.
I tell Elise it will go by fast, but we still have four long, hot weeks between now and our own trip back to the States at the end of July. I've been going more or less nonstop for a year; our recent trip to Cyprus (five days) was the longest break I've taken in the last year, and I'm starting to feel it.
This morning, Peter asked Clementine to play Monopoly with him, but she told him she didn't want to sit on the tile floor. She wanted to sit on the carpet, but the play room was full of toys I had asked them to clean up last night (no one did), and so there was not an open swatch of carpet for them to spread out in. Pete got upset. Clem called his brain dumb, and it spiraled downward from there. They hadn't even been awake for thirty minutes and I hadn't even had a chance to get breakfast on the table yet. How could this be happening??
Pete kicked Clem, then accused us of enslaving them, making them do our bidding all day long. He got sent to his room. I gave him a few minutes to stew, then went looking for him.
He wasn't in his room; he was already trying to sneak out. It isn't often that I know exactly what is wrong with any of them at any given moment, but they aren't so old that most of their problems still can't be traced to lack of sleep or hunger. Pete's mood this morning could have easily been a combination of both.
I gathered him up in my arms and encouraged him to just cry it out like they do on a bad sit-com. It must have been cathartic for him, because he emerged from our mini-therapy session a changed man. Elise asked me what I said to him, but I hadn't said much. When at a loss for words, all I can mostly remember to say is to remind them, "We're on your side." We're not the enemies and we have their best interests at heart. We're their parents, for crying out in the night.
It worked for Peter this morning. We'll see if it works the next time someone breaks down or kicks or punches someone or calls their brain "dumb". We'll see if it works tomorrow, when we do this all over again.
Yes, it might be camps next summer.
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