To be a kid again in summer

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

I envy the kids who get out of school in a few weeks.

Summer vacation - even the words sound luxurious.

"One more week and then finals and then I'm free," my daughter said to me a few days ago. "No more chemistry and no more Spanish for two whole months."

Two whole months. Imagine not having to be anywhere or do anything you didn't want to do all summer long.

Imagine sleeping late and spending hours with friends, and seeing every new movie made, and taking long walks, and reading fat books, and riding your bike all over town, and eating fudgicles, and lazing in the sun, and sitting on the front porch with your best friend past midnight counting all the stars.

Imagine, too, the luxury of being bored, of looking around and having absolutely nothing to do.

Remember bored? The long sigh, flopping into a chair, moping, sighing again.

"What's your problem?" my mother would invariably say as she tried to vacuum around me.

"There's nothing to do," I would stupidly answer.

"I'll give you something to do. Why don't you weed the garden? Clean your room? Or better yet, finish vacuuming for me."

I used to hate vacuuming. I used to hate anything that resembled work.

Maybe my mother hated it too, but there she was anyway on her days off, vacuuming, dusting, polishing, buzzing around like something with new batteries, and she would ask me to do one little chore and I would balk.

"I'll do it later," was my usual response.

And hers was, of course, "You won't do it later. You'll do it now."

Watching how hard she worked, how little she slept, how she never got to just sit and do nothing, I got an inkling that growing up might not be all it was cracked up to be. I got the feeling that I should hang on to childhood for as long as I could.

And I did.

When the inevitable happened, and I got older, I shared with my own children the one thing I knew for certain: that being a grown-up is totally overrated. The two plusses, I told them, are that you get to pick out food at the grocery story, which is a big deal because you can buy chocolate milk and Hostess cupcakes without anyone insisting you need something nutritious. And you get to eat dessert first or dessert only if that's what you want. But you pay dearly for these privileges, I warned them. Because all the rest of this grown-up thing is responsibility and worry and work.

And it is. When you're a grown-up, you don't have a two-month summer respite from everything. You don't get to sleep late, unless you're sick. You don't have time to spend with friends, unless you schedule it. You never read fat books; magazine articles are a challenge. You can't remember the last time you saw a movie that wasn't on TV. You don't take long walks or bike rides because a car can get you where you're going faster. And if you stayed up watching the stars at night, you'd be too tired to get out of bed in the morning.

When you're a grown-up, you're on your own. You can't go to your parents and say, "Can I have a few dollars?" And when you do earn money, by working when you want to be playing, you have to spend it on things like taxes, insurance, medical bills, house and car payments, water and electricity, not on coveted concert tickets and expensive clothes.

You have to do your own laundry when you're a grown-up and cook your own food and when you leave the house a mess, it's still a mess when you get home, because there's no mother there, picking up, cleaning up.

You're the mother or the father and you never get bored because there's always something to do. The storm windows need to be cleaned. The lawn needs to be cut. The car needs to be washed. Tights have to be bought for a dance recital, a present for a wedding, another present for a graduation. There's work to catch up on and people to call and meetings to attend and problems to solve and on it goes - every day, even summer days.

"You know how you always said that someday I'd wish I were a kid again," my son said sometime last week. He called from Florida, where he's lived for a year. "Well it's happened, Mom. I already do."

He'd spent the day in meetings, and the day before - his day off - at a bank negotiating a car loan. He was on his way to a business function.

"I really like my job," he said. "But there I was in the middle of a meeting and all of a sudden I was thinking about how Mike Zagalis and I used to play wiffleball in the backyard on summer afternoons. And I sat there wishing I could get up and go home, call Mike and play ball again."

That's what we all want at this time of year. To get up, go home and be a kid again.