It’s the first week of April and I have not signed my children up for summer camp yet. The squares on my calendar spanning from the middle of June to the end of August – the 10 full weeks that make up summer vacation -- are blank.

I am at once calm and panicked. I am proud not to have succumbed to the pressure to plan our summer schedule half a year in advance. I am terrified that those summer days will blend into weeks and then months of whining boredom.

Like Christmas decorations, the camp brochures seem to arrive earlier each year. Glossy pamphlets began filling my mail box in early February. Sorting the mail tempts me to live not in the moment, but to propel myself months into the future. On a cold, grey, mid-winter afternoon, I give in and anticipate what we’ll be doing the first week in August.

I imagine spontaneously packing up the car with a cooler and towels to head off to the beach looking like some family out of the Lands' End catalog. I picture us taking long bike rides, going on picnics, working a lemonade stand, making hand-cranked ice cream. But experience tells me that after a few days of hanging out with Mom, my kids will crave time with their friends. And their friends won’t be free to join us on an outing to the beach. They will all be in camp.

With resignation, I settle down to register fearing most camps will already be full. I sift through the pile of promotions. The possibilities are endless, overwhelming, and the cost often outrageous. I’ll need a spread sheet and a GPS device just to figure out whether I can promptly deliver two children to two different camps in opposite directions during the correct week – the week their best friends can also attend. (I have been known to show up at last week’s sports camp only to realize that my child is currently attending art camp on the other side of town.)

My 7-year-old daughter and I narrow the choices down to horseback riding, musical theater, cooking, ceramics, and gymnastics. My 11-year-old son considers soccer, kayaking, clay animation, golf, newspaper reporting, and fencing. Suddenly, there are not enough weeks of summer (or dollars in my bank account) to accommodate their preferences let alone squeeze in a family vacation.

I throw up my hands in dismay. I want to go to camp.

By Tina Bournazos

Labels: summer camps, vacations

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Labels: Boston, By Dawn Yun, College, Connecticut, English cucumber, Grand Tetons, homework, New York, school is over, school vacation, summer camps, summer school, World History, Yellowstone

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For longer than I care to admit I have bought into the concept of “fall back-to-school fashions” as envisioned by retailers nationwide. Back to school fashion means abandoning faded T-shirts and khaki shorts for autumn-hued sweaters and thick corduroy trousers to wear stomping in crackly maple leaves.

Or hopping off the ubiquitous yellow school bus in cable-knit stockings and solid jean jumpers with the smell of wood burning in fireplaces wafting through the cold, still air. Perhaps a dapper plaid hat is added to the mix? A comfy scarf wrapped around the neck? Brown leather shoes!

Yes, fall has arrived!

Problem is, fall hasn’t arrived here in sunny northern California by the time children are marching back to the classrooms. The autumn months here are known for their long “Indian summer” days of sunny skies with record temperatures.

Has that stopped me from giving in to the retail buyers’ vision of fall? Have my children sweated through recess on their first day back to school in heavy “fall” clothing?

Before I answer that I’ll share with you how cute they looked --during the first photo taken at the front door, before they stripped down halfway through recess in a desperate attempt to cool off. I, too, remember that first day of school, partly for the memory of happily flinging off my heavy, hot, fall outfit the moment I arrived home and donning a faded T-shirt and cool khaki shorts.

It’s almost a twisted right of passage.

This year will be different. My kids will enjoy their first weeks of school in appropriate warm weather clothing, though not faded T-shirts and khaki shorts.

Come Halloween when the weather tends to take a turn towards fall, chilly nights and we often receive our first rainy days, and I’ll allow myself to buzz happily over the fall clothing in the store windows.

By then, however, the retail shops will be bursting with Christmas-themed pajamas and Santa red sweaters, garments which adorned in November may be a greater fashion faux pas than donning a faded t-shirt and khaki shorts.

But don’t tell my kids.

By Maija Threlkeld

Labels: back to school, clothing, fall, Maija Threlkeld, summer camps

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