Perfect summer, next year

Next summer …

Next summer will be the summer, when I establish just the right balance between my needs and my kids’.

I will post a schedule, with just the right amount of flexibility built in, that will demonstrate once and for all that just because Mommy works at home doesn’t mean Mommy is actually here 24 hours a day and/or ready to take everybody swimming/see “Willie Wonka”/ make strawberry smoothies for the entire neighborhood at a moment’s notice.

I will actually not feel guilty for spending the morning writing while the kids spend the morning bouncing around the house because I will know there are lots of four-hour blocks designated, “Take the kids swimming.”

I likewise will not feel guilty for taking four hours out of the day to take the kids swimming, because I will know that there are also big honking spaces on the schedule that say, “Mommy’s work time.”

Next summer, thanks to this clear and perfectly balanced schedule, not a single child of mine will ever lift his head off the pillow in the morning and say, “What are we going to do today?” which always makes Mommy feel guilty, conflicted, pressured and confused, not to mention unworthy and fearful that her children will not have a carefree, barefoot-in-the-clover summer like she’s convinced she had every year when she was a kid.

Next summer, the child will not have to ask, but will simply go to the schedule and see for himself what “we” are going to do today, which will, God forbid, include such things as “down time.”

Next summer, during said down times, my kids will sit outside on lawn chairs watching the grass grow, so that when winter comes and the plants on the back deck look like Mrs. Simpson’s hair, only in snow, not hair, they will remember that grass not only exists, it grows.

Next summer, there will not be a single, solitary “I don’t have anything to do, I’m bored” because I finally will have learned to say, “You don’t have anything to do? I’ll find something for you to do,” which will magically result in all three of my kids sitting at the kitchen table playing Monopoly from dawn `til dusk.

Next summer, I will have designated a block of time very early on for consideration of school supplies, so that I am not waiting `til the last minute to get a PDQ145 calculator for my high schooler which costs $124 at the office store, which I could have bought off the Internet for $69.99 if I had planned in advance.

By this time next summer, with thanks to our meticulous planning, we will be funned-out, rested up and ready for fall. And the garden will have been weeded.

We will have had just the right amount of work, just the right amount of play, just the right amount of visits to church and just the right amount of Sunday morning breaks, offset by walks in the nearby national forest, which the kids will know are just as valuable for the soul.

We will have just the right tan, which my husband believes is psychologically uplifting even if it is bad for the skin. We will have just the right amount of muscle tone, signifying exercise and sport, and just the right amount of atrophy, signifying relaxation.

Next summer, we will have it all figured out.

Next summer for sure.