Lisa Scottoline - Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog - The Amazing Adventures of an Ordinary Woman

Summer’s over, and I’m trying to be mature about it. I’m ignoring the depression I always feel at the end of summer and the dread at the onset of autumn. For a cheery girl, I get a little gloomy around now.

Why?

Because even though I’m allegedly grown-up, I still have the mentality of a middle-schooler: September to May sucks, and summer rocks! No more pencils, no more books! Summer is for getting crazy, and fall is for facing the music.

I don’t go to school anymore, but I remain on the back-to-school mental clock. It’s like I have to gear up for AP Bio, but I don’t take AP Bio. I never did take AP Bio. They didn’t even have AP Bio when went to high school. They had pop quizzes, and that was scary enough. “Pencils down” will forever be associated with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Nor is it as if I go back to work in September, after my summer vacation. I don’t always take a vacation, and didn’t this year. Like a lot of us, I work seven days a week, year round. I’m not complaining, mind you, I love my job. But it raises the question, why should I be sad that summer’s over, when it’s not as if it were such a big break?

The same goes for Sunday nights.

I always feel a little bummed out on Sunday nights. Sunday night is the Labor Day of the week, if you follow. It’s as if the weekend = summer, and Monday = fall. This makes no sense, again, because I work on Sunday, the same as I do on Monday.

So why do I dread Monday, on Sunday night? Why do I dread fall, at the end of summer? Why do I feel this way? My days don’t change one iota.

Daughter Francesca thinks she knows the answer, and she weighs in, below:

Well, Mom, that’s not exactly true, your days from summer to fall do change in one respect: me. Sure, you haven’t been in school in a long time, but for almost two decades, I have. For the last sixteen years, just being my mother has put you on some version of the summer vacation schedule. Although I realize that, for you, it may not have always been such a vacation-driving me to day camp when I was little, watching me attempt the perfect dive for the 100 thtime in a day, later on, teaching me how to make the drive down to Ocean City by myself, or, most recently, giving in to my insistence that summer is the perfect time to get two kittens. For better or for worse, my summertime glee and back-to-school dread has probably rubbed off on you over the years. But that’s about to change. For both of us.

In a sense, this is my last real summer. The last summer of my childhood, the last summer as a student. As I prepare to be a senior in college, I am preparing for my last academic fall. By next summer, I will be a (gulp) grown-up, or, I guess I’m supposed to say, adult. Summer vacation will shrink to two weeks, and the rest will just be going to work in hot weather. I’m excited to enter the adult world, but to be honest, I’m scared, too. I will have a new sort of weight in the pit of my stomach when I hear my last “pencils down.” I’m out of time.

The chemistry test may be over, but the new test is just beginning. Is my adult life the “fall” of my summertime childhood? Now that I think about it, I don’t even like the word “fall.” It sounds perilous. And I’m afraid of heights.

But then again, maybe summer isn’t gone for good. Of course I know the season isn’t going to disappear, but I mean, summer as-I-know-it won’t go away forever, either. Like you said, Mom, you still get that thrill when the spring days get longer and warmer, regardless of work schedule. It’s as if the weather and the people can finally exhale into the balmy summer breeze. Summer will always be the time of short sleeves, lunch outside, and guilt-free ice cream. Last time I checked, sunshine has no age limit.

And, you know, fall isn’t so bad. Fall isn’t only about back-to-school. Fall is warm colors and warm houses, Thanksgiving and football, crunchy leaves and crisp air. “Fall” doesn’t have to be a scary word. People fall in love. Things fall into place.

And, Mom, if what you wrote proves anything, it’s that if I really miss my summer vacation, I’ll always be able to relive it when I have kids of my own.

Oh wait. Now I’ve scared myself again.

I write this the day after I took daughter Francesca back to college, and I miss her. I know I’m not the only sad parent. My good friend sent her son to kindergarten last week and she’s still crying.

September is a time of beginnings and endings, which are not coincidentally the same thing; the beginning of middle school for your kid will finalize the ending of elementary school. Any movement your child makes toward something will be a movement away from you. And though we’ve all heard that dumb roots-and-wings speech, it still hurts.

You’re happy for your kid, but sad for yourself.

And none of your sad feelings are supposed to show. You don’t want to burden your child, especially when she’s doing exactly what she’s supposed to, which is growing up. So you keep the sadness inside. Your heart says, Ouch, but your face says, Yay! It’s the terrible wrench of parenting, which specializes in the bittersweet.

Oddly, I don’t think we allow ourselves to acknowledge this sadness, even among us parents. I know a mother who says she feels silly because she misses her kid, away at college. We’re all pretending we’re too-cool-for-school, about school.

Instead, let’s clarify things right now: It’s okay to miss your kid. A lot.

In fact, it’s essential to miss your kid a lot. If you miss your kid a lot, it’s proof that you love them. That you’re involved with them. That in the short time they spent in your care, you got to know them well. After all, you miss a lot of things that aren’t as important, right? For example, I miss carbs.

Missing your kid is proof that you’re a good parent, despite the fact that the current vogue is to put down good parents. I’ve seen us called the “helicopter parents,” always hovering over our children, and I’ve read articles putting down children who remain connected to their parents by cell phone and email, calling those kids the “tethered generation.”

Boy, does that burn me up.

It’s good to be a helicopter parent. It’s better to be a helicopter parent than to be Britney Spears. Likewise, it’s good for kids to stay connected to their parents. It’s better to be a tethered kid than Lindsay Lohan.

This is why I love Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. They have a passel of kids and they’ve been married fifteen minutes. Wait, they’re not married, but never mind. All I know is that in every photo I see of them, they’re with their kids, doing kid things. Not only do they spend time with their kids, they wear their kids. They’re holding at least two children at all times; one is always strapped on their front in a Snugli and the other is draped around a shoulder like a noisy handbag.