Summer used to be a time when all the kids were home at once. The ones who weren’t in school were home with me, while the school aged kids were gone from 8-3:10. After the out-the-door rush came seven quieter hours with lesser activity. The school days breezed by fairly fast, but typically with enough time to catch a decent deep breath.

I don’t remember missing my kids, but I remember being so happy when school was out for the summer. When I was a kid at the beginning of summer, I can remember my mom wondering about what she was going to do with us kids. She signed us up for VBS. We spent several weeks at the free town park day camp. We took swimming lessons at Palatine Park in the mornings and spent afternoons and glistening evenings there.

The summer mom-dread was unknown until we moved here to camp. After two and a half months of homeschooling from March through mid-May, I couldn’t imagine how I could possibly handle having all my kids home again throughout the entire summer. Though we lived at a camp where our kids could go for free, I remember looking up the prices of the local Lutheran day camp, an option completely out of our price range.

I’ve been to the beach twice this year, but not to swim. Right now I can only walk down, but not up, as the way back is almost completely uphill. Even so, walking down is more than I could do even two months ago, which for that, I am thankful. It’s hard when I start to remember what isn’t.

I often hear comparison is the thief of joy. I recently connected this statement to my occasional tendency to compare my current weaker and limited self to my walking down and back to the beach easily and swimming almost daily in the summer with my kids self. The effect depends on who I’m comparing myself to. I can stand up straight. I’m not crawling to the bathroom or watching my mom set up a closer commode.

I think I’m getting better at acknowledging thoughts or feelings, and then letting them pass. Gone are the days of me trying to be a who I am not, of not allowing myself to exist as who I am. They say joy and pain will and can exist together. I’ve never liked that about life, but it’s also good to be alive.

I miss the kids when they’re gone. It takes me half the summer before feeling something other than like I’m aimlessly wandering around half-lost. This past week I walked down to the dining hall and back with a mom-friend. Before she left I mentioned not being back to normal. She said I was looking and seeming perfectly normal again. It’s weird how we have things about us others can’t see. I think at times it’s for the best.