Lazy mom’s summer plans — or not

Ah spring! Gorgeous flowers, endless sunshine, and empty shelves in the allergy aisle at CVS. Time to make sure my kids have summer plans.

Yes, even though most of our community seems to pay their next camp deposits in August, and Israel programs have been sold out since Rosh HaShanna, our family remains true to form and starts thinking about sunny weather when it decides to show itself.  Sometimes we are shut out of certain options, but on the whole we’ve enjoyed opportunities we’d never have known about if we followed the crowd.

Part of the reason we are slow on the draw is that for many blissful years, we spent summers in rentals on the Jersey shore.  When their first grandchild turned one, Bubby and Saba decided to treat the family to a week at the beach, a shameless pitch to get more time with their kids and beloved grandbaby. Natalie was as delightful as you could hope, popping through a shower curtain hung as a room divider over and over, shouting “Tada!”  We watched for hours, thinking nothing could be better.

How wrong we were! After that summer, each year brought another baby and another week at the shore. We needed bigger rentals every season, and one year we were too big for any short-term units and Bubby and Saba sprung for a month.  The next year it was six weeks, and then suddenly we were in full-season mode. Although the homes were bigger, so was our family, and for a decade every nook and closet had a crib stuffed in it. The older kids pushed beds together and slept en masse, up to eight at a time, in a pile of blankets and cuddles. Exhaustion alone allowed them to sleep with an elbow up their nose or a foot on their back.

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Each morning we made a full loaf of peanut butter and Nutella sandwiches, slathered on the sunscreen, loaded up several strollers with towels and juice boxes, and moved like a pack of packrats to the beach. We tried every type of tent and umbrella, and every gadget to keep them from flying away in the wind, often to no avail. Digging holes, finding sand crabs, and once in a while making plaster casts of little hands were the only activities besides playing, talking, reading, and swimming. We got to know the ice cream men, all veterans, with an intimacy generally reserved for best friends and life partners. Of course we were easy targets, with up to 14 grandchildren, not to mention adults happy to subsist on Haagen Dazs and FrozFruits, the healthy option.

By the time our kids were supposed to be padding their resumes with summer achievements, or going on the same trips as their classmates, Lazy Mom habits had ossified. My main memories of later summers were filling out lots of forms clearly stating due dates several months earlier.  Spots always open up last minute, and each of my girls got a couple of months of summer camp, at least enough to get the jokes in Jewish movies and recognize a few faces freshman year at college. Camp Ramah was a major part of my childhood for five full summers, so I do feel a bit wistful that my own babies didn’t get their full share of scheduled activities, muddy hikes, and cold pre-Shabbat showers. Instead, they became excellent at entertaining themselves, and us, an invaluable skill bearing lifelong rewards.

Even in high school, summer plans included more lifeguarding and food service than internships and edifying trips. Life has no better instructor on human nature and management skills than working a customer service job in hot weather. I’m grateful to local restaurant managers for teaching my daughters how to remain politely professional despite the outrage of Susan wanting extra tehina — for free! — after her order was packed and paid.

One of the best outcomes of their less planned summers was during covid, when my oldest two decided to put together a backyard drama camp for their baby sister and her friends. Word got out, and before they knew it, they had more than a dozen kids belting out Disney show tunes at legally mandated six-foot intervals. Parents begged them to extend past the initial two weeks, and, voila, my girls were gainfully employed for that whole stuck-at-home summer. On rainy days the kids rehearsed in the garage, while the camp directors sat in the driveway under an umbrella to maximize the size of the stage.  I loved seeing the staff meetings, where they debated which songs to teach and argued over casting decisions with the passion of Hollywood moguls.

There are times I question if we made the right lazy choices, or if we should have pushed for more ambitious summer occupations to lay a foundation for their future ambitions. Perhaps, but they benefit every day from the tight family bonds Bubby and Saba set in motion when they set out to have siblings and cousins smushed under one roof, aimlessly enjoying each other all summer long.

Lari Fein is an attorney, writer, and consultant. She lives in Teaneck with her husband and five daughters. Reach her at Laura.E.Fein@gmail.com.