Our pencils are all sharpened -- let's go!

Those of you who know me won’t be surprised to hear that I’ve entered my usual, hair-tearing, mid-to-late-August, why-is-summer-vacation-so-long phase of the summer. We’ve actually had a nice summer this year, even given that last year included our Disney vacation and this year we’re not doing much in the way of leaving town. The boys spent their usual six weeks at the YMCA day camp, which sounds like a nice, long time, right? That’s because it is a nice long time, and after that, what more break do they need? A couple of weeks to just chill at home without having to pack up and smear themselves with sunscreen daily for camp? Sure. Maybe. But they have, after camp ends, four-and-a-half weeks more of summer break before school starts up again.

It’s too long.

There are things I could do to fill in the time — for one thing, I could have signed them up for more camp (they did two, three-week sessions at the Y; there’s a third session that just ended last week). Or I could have tried other camps — certainly, there’s no shortage of sports camps, arts camps, science camps, theatre camps. Notwithstanding the fact that they aren’t into any of those activities enough to warrant it, I’m out of money for camp, quite frankly. Which also means I’m out of money for a vacation — last year was a big treat for us, and I’m so glad we did it. So, more camp, more structured activties, or a splashy vacation (though to be fair, we are going away next week, to a local spot, for two days) is out of the question.

What is not out of the question is the fact that both of us, my husband and me, have to work, so while I could spend these four and a half weeks loading up my kids’ days with museum and beach trips, movies, lunches out, shopping excursions, and so on, I can only do so much because a decent part of each day does still have to be spent right here, at my computer, working. Yes, yes, I know I’m highly fortunate in that I can juggle my work time as I see fit, and to be sure I’m doing just that, doing more work in the evenings and on weekends then I’d normally do. But for me, as with most freelancers I know, the juggling freedom is a double-edged sword. I can take whole days off, and I have, to spend with my boys — but the more time I take off, the less money I potentially earn, because not only do  I have to meet the deadlines already etched in my calendar, I also have to (or should, always) spend time marketing myself, beating the bushes for more work to put in that calendar so that a few months from now, checks will come in. That’s a long-sentence way of saying, I get no paid vacations.

And again, that’s cool. I understand and appreciate the trade-offs, the pros and cons of my self-employed work/lifestyle.

But it also means summer is too, too long.

I read a hilarious piece by The Daily Show‘s Samantha Bee in the Wall Street Journal online. She’s a comedian, of course, so her take is probably exaggerated for the laughs’ sake, but she goes on and on to great, coffee-spewing-out-the-nose effect about how when she was growing up in the 1970s, kids just wandered around, subsisting on candy and cartoons, their brains slowly rotting until school started again. Now, by contrast, she says, we’re supposed to enrich our kids’ IQs to prevent the summer backslide. And she’s having none of it:

I just don’t have any more energy to dig in and renovate my children into super-intelligent reading cyborgs for the first day of school. I can’t do any more rainy day activities with dry oatmeal in a cardboard box. I simply will not sing the “Fruit Salad Salsa” even one more time; if the children can’t get behind Neil Young that’s their problem until school starts up again. And my stern warnings have become completely senseless; “I’m warning you—if you don’t eat all your Gummy Worms you’re not getting any Sour Patch Kids! I am tired of wasting all this good candy!”

Frankly, from now until September the only learning we will be engaging in will be movie-based. I plan to let them watch “Star Wars,” and will continue to play it in a constant loop until they can imaginatively explain to me what it might feel like to “make the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs.” It’s all I can do to stave off the pandemonium that could be.

Ah, the pandemonium that could be: I hear you, Sam. Right now, my boys are in front of Boomerang (I think; I’m not actually with them at the moment) on TV, which is apropos considering it plays old-school cartoons (Tom & Jerry, anyone?). Later we’ll do the enrich-y thing, with a trip to the library and the bookstore. We go to the beach, usually in the afternoons after I’ve spent the morning alternately breaking up fights and interviewing experts for stories (it can get confusing; I am careful not to shout into the phone, “I don’t care who started it!”). They see movies with the grandparents and get together with friends.

Meanwhile, they’ve all but forgotten how to read, and to write (and I make them do it, believe me!), and I’m basically handing their piano teacher money every week so we can not practice piano all week, or not without grumbling and complaining that their mosquito bites make them too itchy to do the C-major scale more than once, halfheartedly.

Yeah, I’ve had it. Even what Ms. Bee says, regarding her 70s summertimes, is hazy becuase it’s probably not quite true:

…my childhood summer vacations were spent languishing in front of the TV watching Phil Donahue and eating Boo Berry until my skin turned purple. Nobody cared if I read. Nobody cared if I wore sunscreen, or pants. I was like a house cat; my parents barely even knew if I was still living with them or whether I had moved in with the old lady down the street who would put out a bowl of food for me. In the ’70s, parenting was like a combination of intense crate-training and rumspringa, so I would typically spend June through September burnt to a crisp and wandering listlessly around the city, verging on scurvy.

I bet her parents did care, and did want school to just start up again.

Our supplies are bought, our backpacks and lunchboxes are cleaned up and ready, Grandma bought the new Sketchers (thanks, Grandma!). We are ready. I am beyond ready.

T-minus 16 days…

[photo: Everystockphoto.com]

My boys last summer, at a local (safe!) beachside playground.

Last summer, we met our friends Sally and Mike and their kids in a nearby harbor town to let the kids play on a playground, walk around a bit, and get some dinner. Typical late-weekend-afternoon-in-the-summer stuff here on Long Island’s bucolic North Shore. I’d been to this town many times before, but not with my kids, so I didn’t remember the playground, and I figured it would look more or less like every playground I’ve seen in the last eight-and-three-quarter (almost!) years of being a parent.

You know the kind. Carefully planned. Almost too carefully planned, really, with one tiny (plastic) slide for the littlest ones; one high, but not crazy high, twisting slide (but covered, like a tube, or at least with high sides), and maybe a medium-height “bumpy” slide. There’s always an unstable-seeming-but-safe, bridge-like thing. (I think the kids are supposed to feel as though they’re crossing an Amazonian ravine on one of those rickety rope bridges, a la Indiana Jones, not that our kids necessarily know who Indiana Jones is). In another part of the park there are usually swings. And it goes without saying that the surface beneath is soft and safe.

I like safety. Truly, I do. I know that as a kid, though I played with nothing but cement or asphalt beneath playground equipment, I never experienced a major or memorable accident, so I’m willing to admit it’s because no serious accident happened that I can smugly scoff at the padded-cell safety of kids’ play equipment these days. My parents talk (brag?) about blazing-hot metal slides and the rusted poles in monkey bars, atop cracked pavement. And they survived. Right?

Right. And learned how to climb high and exactly where their threshold for fear was on any given day.

So back to this day last summer in this nearby town. On the waterfront is one of those typical parks, as I described above, but bigger. Sandboxes, areas designated for littler ones and bigger ones, lots of swings, but otherwise the expected conglomeration of equipment that seems to be saying, “here you go, kids, play this way!” instead of just sitting there, like the old-school stuff, saying “I don’t give a crap what you do. I’m some monkey bars. Climb me, don’t climb me, it’s entirely up to you.” The latter is often so pre-planned that only the smallest kids really have fun (them, and the teens who occupy the areas at night, but that’s another story.) The former are more like blank slates waiting for kids to make their own brand of fun.

But then our friends showed us a different portion of the park. I drew in my breath. Though it was set on soft sand, this (shaded!) section had metal slides, two of them. Not attached to any other equipment; just slides, with long, metal ladders. And there were two merry go rounds.You know the kind — where you climb on and maybe the bigger kids run around the outside to get it going, and you hope to hell you can hold on tight enough not to be flung out to the elements? Yes, that kind.

The kids loved it.

I was reminded of that park just now when I read a New York Times article about parks, by John Tierney. Now, this is not a new subject. I’ve read it before: playgrounds are getting blander and blander; tots are being followed obsessively around by helicoptering parents, so even on the blandest and bluntest-edged equipment, there’s little to no chance of children getting hurt; playgrounds which may as well have been designed by lawyers.

But this piece got me thinking about something else: it’s not just about a nostalgic longing for the hot metal monkey bars of our own or our parents’ past; it’s about why kids might actually need that perception of danger. Or even the reality of it. A Norwegian psychology professor, a playground-observing expert quoted in the piece, says that kids need to: explore heights; experience high speed; handle dangerous tools; be near potentially dangerous elements like water or fire; play rough; and wander away from adult supervision.

I’d say, the above is a list of attributes and attitudes you don’t find in my local parks. How about yours?

The psychologist, Dr. Ellen Sandseter, goes on to say:

“Climbing equipment needs to be high enough, or else it will be too boring in the long run,” Dr. Sandseter said. “Children approach thrills and risks in a progressive manner, and very few children would try to climb to the highest point for the first time they climb. The best thing is to let children encounter these challenges from an early age, and they will then progressively learn to master them through their play over the years.”

 

As my friends and I sat on the periphery of the more-dangerous, throwback, who-let-this-stuff-stay-here portion of this port-side park, our kids were spinning that merry-go-round for all they were worth. My friends’ son then began climbing trees (he’s the sort of kid who sees basically any structure — trees, fences, playground equipment, hills — as a scaling opportunity) while my sons sort of lingered on lower branches and watched their friend scamper higher. So I guess they were proving Dr. Sandseter’s point: They were doing what they each, individually, felt capable of doing, and not 100% afraid of trying.

Without any piece of equipment telling them thishigh is too high.

I know it’s commonplace now for parents to leap up and admonish and/or hover, but I tried my best to sit on my hands and just watch, remembering for myself the freedom of getting to the top of the bars, or swinging so high the chains on the swing went slack. Remember that? And then when the swing swung back down the chains would snap straight and you’d bounce, hard, jolting your kidneys. It might have given my mother a minor heart attack. If she’d been watching. Which she usually was not.

Do you think playgrounds are perfect, too safe, or not safe enough?

So. We just got back from our first family vacation to Disney World, in Florida. OK, it was our first family vacation, full stop (at least, our first that didn’t involve visiting family members), so it was portentous in more than one aspect. But for sure, hitting Disney at this stage of the boys’ lives was, and is, huge. Huge.

Family vacationing is not a lot of things, such as relaxing and rejuvenating. But it is one major thing, and that’s illuminating. Silly as this might sound, I know my boys better now than I did before we left, and I watched them, even if just a teeny bit, grow in the 6 days/5 nights we were away. They became a smidge more worldly-wise, and also a large measure more deeply themselves. Really, if when we as adults go away to a place we’ve never seen or experienced, we etch more grooves into our personalities, why wouldn’t the same be true of  our children? Being in a new — and overwhelming, overtaxing, exhilarating — environment brought out what’s uniquely James about James (his intellectual approach to things like fear), and uniquely Daniel about Daniel (his devotion to facts and detail).

You just can’t underestimate the power of the Mouse. Even this natural-born cynic fell under the spell of old Walt’s magic. Or should I say, Magic (this being the most-often used word in the 43 square miles of Disney universe). You turn a corner, and there’s a band! Or a parade! You stand still for 5 seconds and a staffer (excuse me, “cast member”) comes up to your child and asks for a high-five and an accounting of their day. Before you know it,they’re chatting about the best way to rack up points on Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin, or debating favorite characters. And they’re all so bloody nice. You do a lot of waving. A lot.

But I have a couple of observations. Which you might expect I would.

One: Innocence rules. A lot of parents who go to Disney World lament the fact that there’s merchandise wherever you turn, and it’s true. It’s an empire, and empires have to sell stuff to make it all profitable–and to increase the sort of intense (insane?) loyalty that keeps people coming back for more. Take those ubiquitous Disney princesses, which some smart Disney marketer decided, a few years back, to group  together into a sort of irresistible-to-little-girls cabal. They’re all there, from the Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty of my youth to the 80′s and 90′s and early 2000′s gals like Mulan, Belle, Ariel, and Jasmine. The force of their allure is so strong it began to appear odd to see a little girl dressed in her regular clothes. The place was crawling with princesses, decked out in polyester gowns and glittering tiaras. Your kid sees the movies, aches for the merch, and then to visit them in “person,” and then you’re dumped right into a store post-ride and you buy some more. It’s a cycle, and you could call it vicious. I prefer instead to just skirt around it. Literally. We went in plenty of stores (mommy needed regular doses of air conditioning, for one thing). But we didn’t buy much at all.

Both boys brought their own wallets with their own stash of dollar bills they could use. James bought: a lollipop, a postcard, a Donald Duck keychain and a Woody Kooky Pen. And I bought him a Mickey t-shirt. Daniel got: a lollipop, a book of postcards, a pen, a Donald keychain and a Goofy Kooky Pen. And a t-shirt from me. This plan worked so well that, in one store James and I browsed while Daniel and his dad hit a ride Jamie was too chicken to try (Splash Mountain), he tried on a Mickey-ear hat done up like Lightening McQueen, as well as a Goofy hat (both of which were adorable, see):

without once asking if he could have them. As he put the McQueen hat back on the rack, he even volunteered, to another mother nearby, “we’re not buying anything. We’re just shopping.” Good boy.

When I say innocence rules, I mean this: My kids know who the characters are, but in a similar way that I did as child. These were quasi-real beings to hopefully get a glimpse of, not an experience to buy into. That’s literally all they see; the rest — the autograph books you can obsessively fill with character signatures; the pins you can buy and trade with others, the princess and pirate garb — is all just eye candy. They have only a dim idea of how huge the whole thing can be, and that’s by design — mine. I don’t deceive myself into thinking they’ll never ask for more and/or buy into it further, but neither do I urge, push, or encourage them to see, do and want more. Which, believe me, plenty of parents do. I saw it.

Two: Diapers and Disney are an odd mix. The first time I went to Disney World, it was quite literally a different era. It was 1976. We drove down in our fake-wood-paneled station wagon, just my parents and sister and me. I was 10, my sister 13. My brother, at 3? He stayed at home with my aunt. (Before you get all boo-hoo about baby bro, by the time he was of age, and my sister and I were in college/on our own, he got trips aplenty that we never imagined, speaking of different eras). But anyway. I don’t recall having seen strollers. Today? There are thousands of strollers, thousands. (Which you can also rent, and which parents rent for kids as old as my sons, too). Here’s just one of the many designated stroller parking areas:

Acres of them, I tell you. Acres.

I don’t disparage wanting to go when your kids are small (and I’m talking not of parents with older kids, but those with only tiny ones); I just don’t understand it, personally. My question is a simple, plaintive, why? Disney’s not going anywhere; it’ll still be pouring out the pixie dust when those kids are out of diapers and ambulatory. I saw many hot, miserable  parents with strollers and sippy cups and diapers and princess tiaras. I saw one family with two girls who had to both be under four, sparkled up to the nth degree as pretty princesses, with a defeated-looking dad and a hugely pregnant mother (bear in mind this is August in Orlando). I saw tiny, flushed toddlers passed out in strollers, and big, flushed parents waiting in line for Dumbo with infants in their arms.

In 1976 it didn’t occur to my parents to figure out how to tote a three year old (who still needed naps, I’m sure). These days, it somehow appeals to to parents to haul three kids under four around for several days. The Magic Kingdom’s added on a new section aimed specifically at the under-kindergarten set, called Mickey’s Toontown Fair. It’s awfully cute, with cartoonish, fanciful buildings and a sprinkler park area filled with tots in swim diapers and parents seeking spots of shade while they watch. Couldn’t they have saved a couple thou and stayed home with the sprinkler, and come back with a splash when their kids were old enough to remember? One thing they seem to be accomplishing (besides lining the pockets of the booming stroller-rental trade) is to be creating Disney-philes earlier and earlier.

Three: The pace can kill you (if you’re not careful). Did I mention the part where Disney is 43 square miles? Old Walt Disney, having shoehorned his original Anaheim, CA park into already-developed land, probably felt a rush of exhilaration (and saw dollar signs, no doubt) when he first toured the swampy center of then empty Florida. And it keeps going. In 1976, it was just the Magic Kingdom. I went back to Disney in my 20s, when EPCOT had joined the group. Now there’s Animal Kingdom, Hollywood Studios, Downtown Disney East and West, Pleasure Island, and two mega waterparks. And you can tour them all! We met and talked to families who were on 12 day trips. Personally, I can’t eat substandard food for that long; Disney does a fairly decent job of feeding the masses (and though there’s a lot of junk food, there are also a good amount of healthy choices), but I was out of patience with feeding myself and my kids from the same range of options over and over. (A food aside: One of the biggest selling “snacks” at all the parks is a giant smoked turkey leg. Yes, you too can walk around in 90-degree heat looking like Henry VIII in short shorts and a sweaty Mickey t-shirt!). We paced ourselves pretty carefully — no late-night “magic hours” for us (on any given night, a park might stay open till 2am!) — and we generally got out of Dodge and back to our hotel for a swim by evening. Plus, we skipped Hollywood Studios (see Innocence Rules, above; if my kids have no idea about the Tower of Terror, should I be the one to drag them there before they ask?) and the water parks (ditto). And though my original plan called for two days at EPCOT, we kept that to one in favor of a third at Magic Kingdom. Why? The kids loved the tea cup ride:

Daniel, spinning Madly. My favorite photo of him from the trip.

...and here's James, also gettin' dizzy with it

…and so did we. I’d rather hang around and do a handful of favorite rides four times over, than drag tired kids from one end of the property to another to “see” it “all.”

So, that was our trip! Any questions?

So, last weekend my family and I were up in the Catskill Mountains, in upstate New York, at a family-style resort we’ve been going to, on and off, my whole life (my dad used to go there as a teen, that’s how long we’ve been patrons of this particular spot). By “family” I mean a lot of us–my parents, my sister, her boyfriend, her kids, her boyfriend’s kid, my brother and his wife and new-ish baby, and me and my boys.

I’ve written about this sort of vacation before, and I’ll write about the whole multi-generational family vacay again, I’m sure, but for now I bring it up because it was yet another chance for my boys to take in little tiny lessons about money. Specifically, the quarters they asked for so they could feed the machines in the game room and increase their stash of rubber bracelets, fake rings, and sticky frogs. As it was vacation, we were liberal with dips into our pockets for extra quarters after they ran out of the modest amount they extracted from their piggy banks at home.

But it was interesting to watch, especially as I’d just written a piece for the website DailyWorth.com about teaching small money lessons to kids. Not big teaching moments: we weren’t drawing up lessons about compound interest or how the Fed works (which I don’t always get myself). But little ones, like the value of a quarter, a dollar, a couple of bucks. Here’s what I wrote for DailyWorth:

I like to treat my five- and seven-year-old sons, but I don’t want them to believe Silly Bandz fall from heaven, or that my wallet is a magic dollar dispenser. So every time they troll the grocery store with me or get tempted by the snacks for sale at summer camp, I try to impart little money lessons—and they’re actually adding up.

• Dollars and sense. Candy and ice cream at day camp are usually a dollar or less, and my sons didn’t understand why I was reluctant to just hand over a buck or two. So I totted it up for them: $1 per boy, per day, comes to $10 a week. That number produced newfound respect for how much their snacks really cost. And respect is where responsible spending starts.
• Size matters. The other day, I tossed a loaf of raisin bread in the grocery cart, remarking that it cost $3.50 a loaf. My seven-year-old piped up: “The Subway sandwich at camp is $3.50.” Ding! “That’s one sandwich,” I said. “This is a whole loaf of bread—breakfast for you and your brother all week.” And he got it. I could see him mentally comparing the idea of all those breakfasts against a measly six-inch hero.
• No matter how you slice it… I sometimes let the kids buy pizza ($2 a slice)—but I usually stop them at one slice (they want more for competition’s sake with their friends, not because they’re hungry). I tell them: $2 may not be much money, but $4 is too much for a lunch they won’t finish, especially when I have perfectly good food at home. I have to repeat myself (often!), but the other day I heard my older son say to the little guy, “You don’t need two slices of pizza for lunch, you know.”

Of course, I get regular reminders that this is a big learning curve for them—and me. Yesterday was supposed to be Carnival Day at camp, and I gave the kids $5 for the games and activities. Well, the carnival was postponed due to bad weather, but guess who spent the $5 on candy anyway? Sigh. One step forward, two steps back.

Since the last time we went upstate to this particular resort, in those ancient, lovely mountains, we didn’t have a lot of things. We didn’t have, for example, the experience of my father undergoing (successful!) surgery for lung cancer. We also didn’t have my newest nephew, Nico, or know what college my older nephew Nicholas was going to. The point is, we’re growing, we’re changing, we’re together.

And we’re thrifty!

Right after this, he *almost* let me kiss him. Almost.

My second son, James, is bewildering and bedeviling in shifting measures, like all offspring, but I have been feeling for a while lately that, while he’s as capable as his big brother of winning or crushing my heart, I understand him better. To put it in actorly terms, I have flashes of brilliance and insight, dealing with him, where I can totally see his motivation.

Why? Because I am he, and he is me. Replace his penis and dormant male hormones with girl parts, let his hair grow (not a a lot, but a little; at his age my mom kept my hair cut in an early-70s pixie, the better to suit my superfine strands), stick him in Dr. Brown’s Delorean set for 2010, and he’d be me. First, in looks. Here’s a pic of me and my sister, when I was around 4:

That's me on the left, with the mini dress (cute, right?) and the Mr. Spock hairdo.

And then here’s James at more or less the same age as I am in the photo above. Also, you’ll note, he’s with his brother. I have more photos of him alone than my parents did, thanks in large part to easier photo technology, but still it’s harder to find photos of him than of his big brother, or without his big brother:

That's James on the left. It occurs to me that he hams it up in photos, with Daniel as straight man. Just like me and my sister.

Here’s how he’s like me in other than looks:

1. He’s gregarious, entertaining, smart and funny (what, you don’t think I am, too?!). That is, when he feels safe. Otherwise, he appears either painfully shy or snootily standoffish.
2. He’s got a dramatic streak 14 miles wide. Direct quotes: “Oh, now we’ll never get there!” (said on a normal-length trip to Grandma’s house marred solely by a short spate of traffic buildup); or “You never make macaroni and cheese” (which I do make pretty darned often, thankyouverymuch); or “I bumped my head and it really, really, really hurts,” when it quite obviously was the lightest possible bump in the history of kids’ bumped heads.
3. He’s a loyal friend, and even at the tender age of 5 1/2, he sees straight through cliquey-ness and cattiness and he instinctively avoids it. It’s cute to watch, because he has no idea that he’s steering clear of the knot of “in” boys because their interactions appear shallow or showy. He’ll say it’s because they’re too loud.
4. He’s not interested, at all, in pleasing grownups who attempt in good-hearted but exaggerated ways to be friends with him. So, teasing and tickling are out, out, out. This of course leads to some bewilderment and temporarily hurt feelings among relatives who don’t see him much, but he’s not giving it away for free, and he sees through a ruse from a mile away, so just don’t try.

I’m musing on this topic for two reasons today. One  is that, on this second week of summer camp after school ended, James is only just now easing into that transition. He finished kindergarten, which was a very big deal to him. The other day, when we were in the car and no one else was talking, I heard him say, softly to himself, “why couldn’t I just stay in kindergarten forever?” So my baby is at a turning point, and he’s not sure who he’s supposed to be, the big first grader, or the baby clinging to kindergarten. So while Daniel leaped eagerly from second grade to a return to the summer camp he loves, James has been more needy, so of course he’s on my mind (and keeping me up at night worrying) more than usual.

Which brings me to the second reason I’m mulling my little one’s resemblance to myself, physically and psychically: I’m trying to figure out the most effective way to deal with a child who is, you know, like me. My grandmother, rest her glorious, tart, sweet soul, used to say that you have to parent each kid the way he or she needs to be parented. Which sounds simple and makes sense, until you get to the part where you have to figure out what those needs are.

With James, I have to pull back from saying breezy, distracting things like, “Oh, but you want to go to first grade!” when he misses his happy, collegial kindergarten. Because of course he does want to go to first grade; of course he does know he’s a big boy; he knows that kind of response is a sop to his ego, which he’s not interested in.

He’s not looking to be distracted; he needs to be heard. You can’t play subterfuge with this kid. You just have to say, “yep, of course you miss kindergarten. Of course you do” and leave it at that.

I have to gloss over the dramatics and praise his good-friend status.

And I have to kiss him while he sleeps, because otherwise I’m not allowed. Come to think of it, was I like that, too? Paging my mom…

How do you shift your parenting styles to suit your kids’ needs?

What does this little guy have to do with our family vacation? Read on!

For many Americans, and famously for much of Western Europe, August is vacation season. Everyone who’s anyone decamps for mountains, lakes, beaches, theme parks, the family cabin, the campground… you get the idea. We’re not going anywhere; in fact, we haven’t gone on vacation in any real sense (that is, for more than a few days; to somewhere that doesn’t involve visiting a relative; or to a place that has bought new sheets for the beds in the last four decades–more on that later) for, um, ever? I, personally, haven’t been on vacation For Real since my honeymoon.

I’m not kvetching, really, just stating a fact as a way of introduction to my somewhat accidental vacation stance when it comes to my children.

When I was a kid, we went on usually one vacation per year, nearly always in the summer, and nearly always to the Catskill Mountains, about a four hour drive north of us in New York State. Back then (as now, I guess), the mountains were studded with resorts, from tiny, pokey, inexpensive places with cabins and a bell that called guests to family-style meals, to higher-end places with indoor and outdoor pools, skating rinks, and evening entertainment. Guess which kind we went to? Yep, the first kind. And we LOVED it. From when I was tiny, we went to a place in Round Top, NY, called Riedlbauer’s, which as you can see from the name was (and still is) owned and run by Germans. Why an extended family of Italian-Americans fell in love with this meat-and-potatoes (literally) place, with nonstop German music emanating from hidden speakers and Alpine-village gingerbread trim on the buildings, I’ll never know. I’m going to assume it had to do with the price. Which was cheap. REALLY cheap.

But it was fun — and we didn’t know any better. We didn’t know there were Caribbean resorts, or even nice hotels on beaches in Florida (we did go to Florida when we were a bit older, during February break, but that was only after our grandparents had become snowbirds and had winter dwellings there. Nothing like spending a winter vacation in a retirement village. Whatever: there was a pool!).

But back to Riedlbauer’s. As kids, we’d spend a July or August week there, eating our three square meals (plus dessert!) a day, swimming in the pool, hiking through the woods, splashing in the cool mountain creeks and waterfalls. My kids have now been to Riedlbauer’s a couple of times, for long weekends in October. It’s become something of a tradition, with my parents, my brother and sister in law, and my sister and her three nearly-grown kids. We don’t care for the food, as abundant as it is (they’re nice, warm, welcoming people, the family who runs the place, but they wouldn’t know a salad or a fresh vegetable if it was dumped over their heads, though it’s a great place if you like meat, with side dishes of potates, and perhaps more meat); the rooms have not been redecorated since an “upgrade” sometime in the mid-seventies; the sheets are scratchy; that German music never stops; and the entertainment involves the owner, Henry, on his electric keyboard, accompanied by an accordionist, and every so often some German folk dancing.

But it’s a total blast. We all sit around these 1970s Formica tables in the main room at night, getting pitchers of beer from the bar and doing the Chicken Dance with the kids. Days, we hike the same trails we hiked as kids, to the same sites: Polly’s Rock, with its views over the gentle mountains, and the wide pool with the waterfall you can walk behind. Watching my boys toss flat, smooth rocks into the same pools my father once did is, you know, priceless.

A sight to see, generation after generation.

Daniel and James learning to skip creek-smooth stones.

I don’t have any photos of the food, possibly because goulash doesn’t really photograph that well, but suffice to say we get a lot of laughs out of dinner (and the boys end up making up most meals from the bread and butter, and the peanut butter and snacks I tote from home). But I have to show you the beds, with the acid-yellow spreads:

The furniture and bedding is distinctly 1970 (or even earlier).

One major thing going to Riedlbauer’s has done for my boys — and for me — is to cement the idea that an extended family, ranging in age from 4 to 72, can all have fun doing the same things at the same time. And another thing it’s done just for my children is to give them wildly low expectations of what a family vacation can be.

There are kids in my son’s class who go on an annual cruise, routinely hit Disney World, and have been to the kind of posh all-inclusive island resort I didn’t even know existed until I was fully grown. That’s fine; I’m not dissing those parents. If could have afforded a way cooler vacation, with way better food and sheets with a much higher thread count, I’d have done it, and I will, someday, when our finances allow. I want to treat my kids, give them things I didn’t have, all that stuff that’s natural for parents.

But I’m actually kind of gratified that a pokey spot like Riedlbauer’s makes my kids happy. Crazy happy, in fact. I’m gratified that this is what Daniel asked me a few months ago, when it suddenly occurred to him that other people had other types of vacations:

“Mom? Is there someplace besides Riedlbauer’s?”

See. Low expectations. Next vacation stop: probably my parents’ Florida condo come February. If they see a fancy hotel room before they’re 10, they just may explode with happiness. And that’s just fine with me.

"No more pencils?" Boo.

The sign at the entrance to my son’s primary school reads, under the school’s name, “A First-Class Experience.” And it is, truly. So much so, that I wish he could stay there all year. And why not?

I love school, and my son does, too — he just finished first grade, and this year we hit the sick-day jackpot, with a total of… wait for it… none. The only time Daniel missed school was the day I took him out to go to his cousin Tara’s graduation ceremony. Just recently, he actually did get sick, but returned to school the next day (bless you, Amoxycillin). Just so you don’t think I’m so draconian a mom that I forced my child back to school the day after a clinic visit, (a) he didn’t have a fever; (b) he was medically cleared to go; and (c) he wailed that he wanted to go back. Gee, either he loves school as much as I think (he said, “Mommy, I can still learn things!”), or the prospect of a day home with me is not so enticing.

So yeah, he’s a bit of a geek.

School’s over this Friday. And though my boy is as much of an “I love school” nerd as his dear old mom was, he’s as thrilled as any of his classmates to embark on summer break, with the prospect of pools and beaches, bikes and ice cream, and, later in the summer, six straight weeks at the local YMCA camp (bliss for us both). It may seem contradictory to say that my child both loves school and leaps for joy at half-days, vacations, and holidays, but I don’t think it is.

I think the love of school is deep and real, and the joy over vacations, while also genuine, is also goaded into being by some social mirroring. All kids pick it up — that “no more pencils, no more books…” feeling — from each other. And if we moms are pushing the “thank goodness  school’s over” vibe, well, that can’t do much long-term good, can it?

Am I alone here in wishing my kids were in school longer? The whole overlong summer vacation is anachronistic, based as it is on agrarian calendars. We don’t need the boys home in the summer to put in the crops (or take them out or whatever you do on farms in the summer. See! There’s something my kids could learn about in a summer school program — where our food comes from!) It’s also out of sync with the lives of working parents. There are plenty of parents — and some professional organizations — seeking to bring back more of a year-long schedule, both for convenience and for continuity. I just today stumbled on this piece in The Washington Post, by a writer named Brigid Schulte, extolling the virtues of her kids’ year round program.

She makes many great points. While we all say we looooove summer break, it’s just not the same animal it was when (cue dreamy back-in-time music) I was a child. Back then, summer was an endless idyll. We had a backyard, a quiet dead-end street, and other kids’ backyards, pools, playhouses, and sprinklers. We had the local beach, and the town rec department’s swimming lessons. I recently asked my mom if she’d ever considered sending us to summer camp. “Listen,” she said, “when we moved out of the city, we figured that was summer camp.”

But times have changed. As much as I long for this to be true, it’s not going to be the case that my kids will get together with the neighborhood kids to play flashlight tag all over the street and the neighbors’ yards, or catch fireflies in jars, or eat PB&J sandwiches and Strawberry Quick-flavored milk on the roof of Pattiann’s playhouse in the “woods” (a.k.a. the stand of scrubby trees at the back of her property).

These days, even stay-at-home moms have to invent activities and work the calendar to beat boredom and keep the kids occupied. And working moms? If you’re like me, you’re booking camp back in February to ensure a spot. Thank heaven for the YMCA, which is relatively inexpensive, close by, and a fabulous experience for the boys. They went last year, and I judged how well Daniel loved it by how dirt-, sweat-, sunscreen-, and S’more-smeared he was by the end of the day.

Shulte’s article describes her children’s extended-year school, and it sounds ideal to me. It’s not all sitting at your desk, drilling the multiplication tables all summer. Instead, the year is broken up by “intercessions,” when kids get to do fun projects that only incidentally sneak in the learning. (Hmmm. Sounds like camp).

Yesterday I brought my younger son, James, to the busstop with me to pick up Daniel. James’ preschool ended last week. When another mom asked why James was there, he said, “My school’s over.” I laughed and added, “Yes, but he was all set to go this morning — I had to remind him several times that he was staying home.”

To which my neighbor replied, “I can’t wait for school to end! My kids are over it, too.”

Over it? They are? Or is it just you?

There are some things I’m glad to be rid of, such as sifting through endless papers and projects in backpacks, and prepping endless lunches and snacks. But I’d never let that on to my sons. School? It’s a joy!

What’s your take on summer break?

[photo credit: Everystockphoto.com]