How I Spent My Summer Vacation

It’s back to school time.

Whether you are a student or not, September brings with it the time-honored tradition of discussion how we spent our summer vacations.  It is a natural time for some reflection, a little goal-setting, and perhaps taking stock of personal inventory.

And that’s exactly what I’ve been doing for the last several days…

We had big plans for this summer.  Huge, really.  This was the summer we were going to paint every room in the house.  Six years after signing the mortgage seems like a good time to make a commitment to colors other than construction white.  We were going to clean out the garage, sell or donate the unbelievable amount of stuff we have lurking around here.  It is amazing how quickly things accumulate and, apparently, it is true that people tend to fill to the brim whatever amount of space they have.

We intended to do several family-style summer things with our Kidzilla.  We thought we might hit the beach, enjoy her first day at an amusement park, stroll through a zoo or two, see a couple of children’s plays and at least one night of fireworks.  We wanted her days and nights to be filled with summertime wonder.

For the grownups, there were plans for movies or plays, a dinner or two out someplace with real linens on the table where we didn’t have to cut anyone else’s meat and say “please stop doing that” or “do not put the frog on the table again.”  For rainy days when we felt really ambitious, we considered teaching the Rotten Cats how to clean the house.

But as we all know, things do not always go quite the way we intend.  I am reminded of a line from Robert Burns’ poem “To a Mouse.”  Actually, the whole poem is applicable in this scenario.  But this well-known and often-quoted line is the one that has been on my mind: “The best laid schemes of mice and men go often awry…”

How very true.

In the poem, the speaker happens upon a nest of mice when turning his field.  He addresses the little mouse directly, and then proceeds to draw a parallel between the mouse’s predicament – having her house turned over by his shovel – and his own apparent sadness and personal turmoil.  He speaks of fear and uncertainty in the face of the dashing of confident plans for the future.  He speaks of the approach of bleak December.  While the poem certainly spins autobiographical, the sentiment is universal and timeless.  How many of us humans have found our confident plans for the future dashed by a sudden turn of events?

At the beginning of the summer, our family had all the best laid schemes for the long weeks ahead.  And with a sudden and wicked turn of the shovel, My Husband lost his job.

But no – that is inaccurate.  Allow me to rephrase.  My Husband had his job taken from him, as did the Mouse her home.

We are by far not the first to have this happen to us.  We will not be the last.  We were not so naïve as to believe that we were somehow exempt from the possibility, that we were untouchable.  And yet the blow still fell as stunningly and swiftly as one can possibly imagine.  And as the ground surely fell like rain into the Mouse’s nest, other difficulties fell around us as well…other job losses among our friends, serious medical scares for two close relatives, the sudden death of a friend and confidant…

And so our summer schemes did not unfold in quite the manner we had intended.

We did not take all the trips we had planned – some, but not all.  We did not paint every room in the house.  The garage sits untouched.  We spent the early days of summer in quite a state of shock.  I know no other way to describe it.  As the summer wore on, so too did our patience.  In some ways, we experienced reactions much like those that occur in the stages of grief.  And those stages and reactions are completely appropriate in these circumstances.  We have, after all, grieved rather heartily.

But neither have we wallowed in sadness and self-pity all summer.  We have lived some days sad, angry, and frightened, to be sure.  But we have also lived well.

We took Kidzilla to her first movie in the movie theater – complete with popcorn and fake butter.  She loved it.  We did stroll around a zoo – a big one with big animals and a carousel for Zilla’s first ride.  We did not get to the children’s plays (yet), but we watched all of Swan Lake on YouTube, believe it or not.  We listened to music, learned new songs, watched a sock caterpillar filled with grass seed grow on the back porch.  We saw fireworks more than once and taught Our Daughter the joys of eating ice cream for dinner when it is just too darn hot for anything else.  We stayed up late, played games, had “stay in your pajamas” days, spent time in bookstores and on our own porch reading for hours on end.  We picked out new fruits and vegetables and new recipes to try and we made a mess in the kitchen baking Valentine’s Day cupcakes in July.  Mom and Dad did catch a movie or two and ate grown-up dinners alone.  We’ve gone through every room in the house and hashed out our decorating plans from paint colors to throw pillows.  We really did a lot – some things from our list of plans and schemes, others not.

But more importantly, we grew.

Our growth was fairly obvious in some ways.  We watched Kidzilla take one more step out of babyhood and toward full-blown kid.  We watched a few extra pounds creep back onto the scale after some noteworthy success in that department.  We added some new clutter to the garage.  And we grew in other more subtle ways.  We drew one another close and held on for dear life.  We reached out to those around us for support and comfort and were rewarded over and over again.  We strengthened our bond as a family and to those around us.  We re-connected with old friends.  We re-examined our dreams, our goals, our plans for the future.  We questioned and deepened our Faith as well as our ability to face and accept whatever new path is laid before us.  We made choices that will enable us to move forward from this time confidently, open to whatever day tomorrow brings.  We laughed through our tears and we loved.

And so we begin this back-to-school cycle with quite a list of things we did with our summer vacation.  But we also begin this next stage of our Life like any new school year…with fear and excitement, with determination to learn and to experiment, and with a few fresh pencils in our pocket, ready to go to work on our next assignment.