parenting stories – Heather Christena Schmidt

“Summer plans,” or – as I like to call them – “just another group of months with the same old shit only hotter” are steadfastly approaching, and I feel like we need to discuss them.

We were at the doctor the other day, my 15 year old was having her yearly physical. The doctor asked what our summer plans are and the crickets chirped. Summer plans? The concept is lost on me.

It’s been in conversation for about two months now.

It’s a woefully tiresome topic, because – inevitably – it becomes one of those instances in which I feel like I have to explain myself to people. Twenty minutes into it, I’ve gotten nowhere. Usually this is evidenced by whomever I am talking with clearly not understanding what I’m saying, and changing the subject with something like “well there’s always room for spontaneous summer plans!”

And herein lies the first problem I have any time people ask me questions: I can never just give simple answers. Somewhere along the line, I conditioned myself to always justify what I am saying. In reality, I don’t have to explain my or my family’s reasons behind what we do, or in this case don’t do, to anyone.

We don’t have summer plans. Why not? Because we don’t want to.

Because we homeschool, we might be a little unique. My kids are around all the time during the school year, so I can’t exactly identify with the whole you-people-are-driving-Mom-crazy-for-these-two-months-every-year thing.

My kids drive me crazy all year long.

So in terms of camps or classes, or special outings: there’s really no need for it. Why would I put my children in a day camp that is the older-kid-equivalent to daycare when there is literally no need for me to do so whatsoever? It isn’t like they’re getting bored and need to be kept entertained. Or they are driving me batty and I need them out of the house. Summer for other people is our lives, every day of the year (except there’s schoolwork in there).

This is the second problem, although I wouldn’t call it a “problem,” so much as a circumstance. Our circumstance, because we homeschool, is that my kids are around all the time. I don’t need to keep them entertained, or do all kinds of extra activities because they are driving me crazy in the house. These things (the stuff we do, including the fun stuff) is peppered here and there through the entire year, because we aren’t beholden to a school district calendar.

That’s just the way it is, and yet no one (and I mean no one) can seem to grasp that concept.

The third thing worth mentioning is my husband’s work schedule. One of the reasons we homeschool is to accommodate his career in film. It’s hectic, it’s unpredictable, and it’s overnight. Anyone that’s ever worked in the film industry knows that summer and holidays are the busiest times for them, so vacations around then are not always in the cards.

If I’m being entirely honest, vacation isn’t really something we normally do at any time of the year, either. He’s just usually too busy, and when he’s not busy he’s catching up on sleep. What kind of a vacation involves Dad sleeping half the day, and keeping everyone up all night because he can’t (and shouldn’t) change his sleep schedule for the couple of days?

(And also, if we’re being REALLY HONEST… film work doesn’t exactly cover the cost of exotic cruises and trips to Hawaii for 5 + my dad.)

At a tennis match the other day, the mother of a couple kids my kids play with told me that she’s decided since her husband is working a lot this summer, she’s going to maybe just do the craziest thing ever and take the kids somewhere on her own! Can you imagine?

I take my kids places on our own all the time. If we waited for my husband to be available, we would be waiting years behind our graves.

This, I think, is a suburban thing: that families should do it all together, and if they don’t there’s something crazy or exotic or weird about it. The reality of it is that there is absolutely nothing unique about our situation at all. So many people have so many different circumstances to their jobs/homes/lives, it just is what it is.

And yet… this is the fourth thing. I waffle back and forth between wanting to live my life and let my kids live theirs; and feeling the guilting and the pressures that our culture has me conditioned to believe, which is that we should all be patiently waiting to live our own lives with our hands folded neatly in our laps for my husband to be available.

Except that he’s living his life by working in his dream career. This is literally what he dreamed about in childhood, went to college for, and has worked all these years to achieve. So we should not live while he… lives?

Why do we worry so much about summer plans anyway? Maybe this is just some weird stage of life I am in, where your plans end up largely dictated by your children’s plans, forcing everyone into these specific time frames to create family memories and – oh I don’t know – live life.

Or maybe it’s something bigger. Like a status thing. I remember a movie once where the guy says in a snooty voice: “where do you summer… I SAID WHERE do you summer?” The concept is lost on me.

My summer plans are the same as my every day plans. My kids do schoolwork. They do chores. They play tennis. The baby and I watch Story Bots and play with blocks. I cook. I clean. Sometimes we go to museums and libraries, some days we binge watch Supernatural.

And I think I’m much happier and more content than a lot of people. We don’t save life’s moments for special occasions or the summer months, when conditions are perfect. We live them every day.

Six of the most horrific words to ever exit the mouth of another human being while sitting in an outdoor Johnny Rockets – a crowded public venue.

The day was already bizarre enough as is. Every day seems to be here in beautiful and unpredictable-weathered California. We had an early morning phone call that swimming class was canceled because a kid in the earlier class had taken a dump in the pool, so I figured – what the hey, we’ll go out for lunch today.

We go out for lunch most days, but not usually “sit down”-type lunch that takes time and effort and “quiet down, we’re in public” on repeat. I’m not saying we go to McDonalds every day, just usually grab salads and sandwiches to-go as we travel from place to place during the daily activities. Because that kid took a growler in the pool, though, we had some extra time and Johnny Rockets was the place of choice simply because it was close and has grilled cheese.

The lunch was fine; service was good; atmosphere was as acceptable as a California-restaurant’s atmosphere can be. There was a guy sitting behind us who was running for city council, and apparently everyone knew because they all had to stop and gab with him about his race (having worked in politics and spent time with most of the politicians in the forefront of government today, I am usually unimpressed by such pomp and circumstance).

We were finishing up our lunch, though, and the check had just come, when all of a sudden the man sitting next to us let out the most uproarious, outrageously loud belch I have ever heard.

Now, I have heard some loud belches in my time. Growing up with just my father, burping was something regularly done in our house. My grandfather (my mother’s dad) still insists on saying the word belch while he does it in a room full of people. My husband – well, we all know he’s a pig.This guy at Johnny Rockets today, though, really took the cake.

What made it barf-worthy, though, was not the belch, itself. No, no, faithful blog followers. It was what he said afterwards to the guy he was lunching with – who, I might add, flinched not one bit at the guy saying it. What was it he said, you ask?

That belch tasted like rotten milk.

Fucking sick. I’ll be taking the Pookies elsewhere from now on if that is the kind of clientele that frequent our local Johnny Rockets.