good enough summer

If spring is the season of rebirth and winter is the season of rest, then summer is the season of fun. Just, so much fun.

Growing up, as soon as the school year ended, my mom would take a large piece of poster board, create a calendar, and fill it to the brim. Wednesdays were for the beach. Thursdays, the pool. In between, we went to parks and on hikes and drove miles and miles to visit faraway family.

It was so much fun.

Now, I am a mother. And I want my kids to have fun. But the schedules, the calendars, the hours and hours under the merciless sun, it all feels like too much sometimes. Too much pressure to be a Fun Mom.

My Instagram feed is full of Fun Moms. They spend hours at the park. They sign up for swimming lessons, soccer teams, day camps. I feel like I should be a Fun Mom, but I’m not. I’d rather play with art supplies and read books in the air-conditioning than sweat it out on a playground at three in the afternoon. I like visiting the lake, but I want to be home long before the sun goes down for showers and snuggles. 

I’m writing this from my couch, after a week of Fun Mom activities. We had family in town, and we filled our hours to bursting. We played arcade games, rode go-carts, went bowling. We visited the aquarium, had a barbecue, and stayed up past our bedtimes every night (yes, mine too). It was so fun.

The other day, on our way home from one of these Very Fun Activities, we hit a thunderstorm. They’ve been rolling in nightly lately, which is delightful, but also uncharacteristic for our typically dry area.

As we walked to the house from the car, my daughter found a very large puddle. I watched as she stood at the edge, looking at her reflection. Then she carefully, cautiously, stepped in it. She watched the ripples, then stepped again. I watched her be enchanted, delighted. 

I may not be a Fun Mom. I may not be up for packing every minute of our summer with grand adventures. But maybe I don’t have to be. Maybe this doesn’t have to be a Fun Summer. Maybe it can be a Good Enough Summer, where the magic of puddles and the magic of go-carts are equally important. Where there is activity and rest, sunshine and shade, ordinary and extraordinary all rolled into one.

---

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Fun Mom Summer".