An Unremarkable Summer
Summer is already coming to an end around here. Because of that, I know I am feeling all the feels, but also I am trying to be intentionally reflective about the past couple of months. I’ve tried to give myself space over the past week to sit with these few questions before the school year begins.
Why did this summer feel like it went so quickly? It’s the same 8 weeks is always is!
What would we / could we do differently if we could do it again?
What worked and what didn’t?
What was a good yes and or a good no?
What do we want next summer to look like?
As i’ve been sitting with this summer, I have realized that it has felt pretty unremarkable. And what I mean by that, is exactly what the definition is “not particularly interesting or surprising.” It has nothing to do with the amount of things we did or didn’t get to do, but I think for us, it was much more the intention, or lack of intention, put into those things.
So often, I really do give things so much thought and make decisions with intention. However, when push comes to shove, and the busyness of life begins to creep in, those intentions get put on the back burner. For instance, I intended to make bedtime a sweeter and slower thing during summer, but we overextend ourselves and stayed out too late, and then when bedtime rolled around I had nothing left to give. Or another example is, I intended to bring the kids into the daily chores more during the summer, but the reality of the chaos that they brought to chores made it that much more time consuming and I quickly stopped having the energy to enforce that.
The kids participated in quite a few camps, but because of the hustle of getting them to and from camp, and just figuring out scheduIes, I can’t say that I even was able to enter into those experiences enough as I typically like to.
Now, I say all of this, with such a gracious heart towards myself. I am not beating myself up, I am not feeling sorry for my kids, but I am truly just looking at it in a curious way about how things went. I feel very strongly that things cannot change and improve if we never have time to reflect. Now, the truth may be that we are in a busy stage of life with little kids, and it makes sense that our intentions are unlikely to always be followed through with. However, I refuse to stop having them just because they don’t always happen.
When we stop living our lives with intention, I think we stop growing. We stop moving forward towards one another as better version of ourselves. I want my kids to see me living my life with intention — even if it doesn’t always work out how I hoped it would. Actually, especially when it doesn’t turn out how I hoped it would so that I can teach them the reality of life and pivoting and trying again.
I want us to remember our life. I want my children to remember their childhood. I want them to remember slow days at home in the backyard, cooking with mom, playing with their brother and sister, creating, and listening to beautiful music. I want them to remember sibling tousles and then the repair. I want them to be bored and find something new to make. I think for me and my family, that in order to have that remarkable life, we need less stuff, less on our calendar, and more time together.