Ode to Summer

Then summer arrives in a blast of heat, and once again I’m hit with the rude reality that adults just don’t get summer serenity. This is how the summer goes down for all mothers everywhere.

Camp Bracha starts at 9:15 a.m., Camp Ora starts at 9:25 a.m., and they are on the same narrow, one-way block, along with five other day camps. No, you cannot drop Bassie off early at Camp Ora unless you want to pay for early drop-off. Instead, you spend the 10 minutes between start times circling the block — if you can navigate the traffic caused by the other mothers dropping off.

The rest of your day is swallowed up between driving Shmuli to Shacharis, Minchah, and Maariv, and Adina to and from the pool where she lifeguards. But you’re lucky: You have the hours between 10:30 and 2:30 to yourself, barring lunch emergencies, injuries, and the myriad reasons why your child may not be in camp. Oops, there’s the phone! Sima left her lunch at home, and her camp is leaving on a trip in two minutes. There goes your whole day, down the driving drain.

Children are hungry in the summer, and hungry children are hangry. That puts you on full-time kitchen duty, providing at least three meals per day plus multiple snacks. Think breakfast, lunch, snacks, after-camp snack, before-supper snack, supper, later supper, midnight snack. Everyone is always starving, and there’s never anything to eat in the house, despite the fact that you went shopping in three stores this week and spent $500 on groceries. Go figure.