Reflections on a Lousy Summer
This past January I put my daughter in daycare. She was nine months old at the time, and it was her (and her parents’) first experience with paid childcare. Her first day happened to be a Tuesday. By the time we picked her up on Thursday afternoon, she had the flu. By the middle of February, our house was on virus number four. By the time coxsackie (the nasty and dreaded Hand, Foot, and Mouth virus) swept through her class in mid-May, I had completely lost count of how many viruses she’d brought home. Between myself and my husband, one, the other, or both of us caught every single virus except coxsackie. From January through June, someone in the house was always sick, so we were working and parenting through illness at all times. We had no date nights; hell, we barely left the house at all on weekends. By the time we reached early June, I had hit the lowest point of burnout.
I knew I owed it to myself and my family to address the burnout, and decided that summer would be the ideal occasion for burnout recovery. I mapped out a plan for what I needed summer to look like and how I needed it to go. My plan included things like a thirty-hour work week through Labor Day; a stack of frivolous, delicious novels to read1; a fixation on Greek and Mediterranean food not always cooked by me; scheduling our babysitter in advance for as many date nights as possible; at least one lazy afternoon at the pool each week. I dreamed of rest, restoration, laziness, a desperately-needed escape from the brutal winter and spring of all work and no play.
If any of this had actually happened as planned, I wouldn’t be writing this, right?
I did not experience a restorative summer of burnout recovery. Instead, I watched my husband lose a parent and my child lose a grandparent. I’m not going to expound too much as I feel it is mostly not my story to tell, but the death was sudden and too soon, a gut-wrenching loss that feels impossible to process. I have stayed in a supportive background role here, I’ve felt that to be my rightful place as the daughter-in-law whose parents are just fine; but I do feel comfortable spitting out a piece of universal advice to all the married/partnered people with still-living in-law(s): when you lose your mother- or father-in-law - and you will - don’t erase yourself completely. You’ll immediately jump into a support role, both because you want to and because you have to; but you will also feel your own unique, albeit less severe, loss. My advice is to acknowledge it as best and as much as you can. And if you have children, you will have to endure watching your child(ren) lose a grandparent. And I know I’m writing this from the lowest point in the valley, but for now I’m convinced that this is simply an impossible ask of the human condition. We are not meant to endure this. We are not capable. The end.
All summer, I barely saw the beach, I never once visited the farmer’s market, and I ate a mere one heirloom tomato. But it was not a juicy, luscious, brightly colored farmer’s market beauty, it was a shitty one from the grocery store, shipped in from God knows where. I was one of the, what, seven? people on Instagram who didn’t visit Tokyo or Italy. Our Northeast US weather was mostly lousy. While the rest of the US experienced horrifying, record-breaking heat waves, we barely saw 80 F. And our unseasonably cool temps were accompanied with so. much. rain.
I fear this may sound like a sob story, and if so, I apologize. The poet Mary Oliver ended her beloved poem “The Summer Day” with the poignant and oft-quoted words:
“Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
My summer plans were centered around reclaiming my one wild and precious life; instead, we were met with death too soon. I write this not for head pats but to give space and voice to myself, my family, and anyone else who hated all or parts of this summer.
Summer is a most seductive season. It’s billed as a magical three months, a warm fantastical escape from the school year/cold weather grind. It beckons us to indulge in romantic idealizations of exotic travel, perfect juicy luscious tomatoes, leisure pool afternoons with a trashy novel, ice cold beers with neighbors and friends, powdery white sand beaches. I certainly did. These indulgent daydreams never account for things like boredom, or bickering children, coxsackie outbreaks at the community pool, delayed flights, lost luggage, bad sunburns, tropical storms, or broken air conditioners. These things happen - plus far worse! - with predictable regularity literally every summer, but they never happen in our yearning, overtired brains. Reality can be so cold and cruel.
I think humans have always longed for and romanticized the summer season, demanding it live up to fantasies we refuse to acknowledge as unrealistic, insisting it compensate us for our winter doldrums2 and capitalist grind. I also think our modern landscape of online connectivity, particularly social media, has metastasized this existing - and probably unhealthy - mindset. Every June through every August, you cannot log in without imbibing a daily dose of stylish, carefully-cropped, summer-centric posts: luxury vacations, alllll the pools, every kind of beach in every beach location, farmer’s markets, summer produce, margaritas, mouth-watering frozen treats… Everyone is “living their best life” during the warm months, with what is tailored and triaged to look like unlimited financial means, few work commitments, stellar health, and blissfully grateful children. Everyone except you, it can often start to seem.
Summer, as with all seductions, never really delivers on its promises. But thanks to the social pressures of social media, our culture has deemed it uncouth to freely admit this fact. Every year on Labor Day weekend your feed is filled with exaltations of the glorious, fun summer that was had by all, complete with picture collages, hashtags of blessing, and overstretched grins. Every year it’s the same, every year we are bombarded with summations of people's supposedly *EPIC* summers. If you had a summer filled with tragedy, illness, injury, hardships of whatever variety, or just terrible weather or a relentless pile-on of inconvenience, these carefully curated beaming, sunny, beachy posts can be quite alienating. And if someone’s summer really was that fantastic with no hardships or inconveniences, then I’m truly happy for them! But I strongly suspect that they’re in the minority, probably the vast minority. I think most people’s summers are a mixed bag. Mine was mostly very difficult, and there’s no way I’m alone.
We all know the corrosive effects of social media, we all recognize how much those apps incentivize and pressure us to curate our life for presentation and consumption; how everyone posts pretty, perfectly composed shots that tell a story of adventure and bliss, how we neatly erase the tough, tragic, gritty, grumpy aspects of our lives. Many fine minds are interrogating this issue and its collective effects, I need not repeat everything here. I suppose I just want to make space for all the crappy summers that don’t live up to the promise of warmth and rest and joy, for all the summers that bring tragedy, for every day of summer that wasn’t welcome on Instagram lest it disrupt the curated fantasy.
I took this photo the week my mother-in-law passed away. There is nothing in it that hints at tragedy or despair. I could have easily posted this on Instagram with no one being the wiser, and easily sent “living my best life” vibes, even though we were really, really not.
My new novel stack included:
Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
The Spare Room by Andrea Bartz
The Quiet Tenant by Clemence Michallon
The Guest by Emma Cline
Bad Summer People by Emma Rosenblum
Whalefall by Daniel Klaus
You Can Trust Me by Wendy Heard
I got around to reading three of these books, yes, a whole three, count ‘em! The Spare Room, Bad Summer People, and The Guest. I loved them all, they are fantastic, enthralling beach reads. My low number is depressing, though.
If you mentally and emotionally struggle to endure cold or gray winter seasons, we are spirit animals, and I will just put out there that I found the book Wintering by Katherine May to be a very helpful, insightful, and validating read.