Silent Summer
Posted on September 9, 2007
Filed Under marriage, kids, parenting, suburban joys, snark, advice, milestones, summer camp |
Since I’ve slipped off the blog radar for a few months now, I’m going to treat my return as a tentative venture - can CCE return to the blogosphere without becoming obsessive? Time will tell.
I feel I owe you fine readers an explanation for my silence. I can report no hardship or devastating loss. I was afflicted by only the most basic of ailments, the innervating effects of too much sunshine. In short, summer sapped my drive and dedication.
Now that the chill of autumn is in the air, my normal brain function has returned and I’ve reviewed my last few posts dating back to May. And I can’t help but wonder my desperately addled brain devising plans to run an evil summer camp where children dodge mosquitoes infected with West Nile Virus in order to keep perennial gardens free from weeds and lawns devoid of crabgrass. I conclude that over the course of the past three months I have morphed into a much nicer person, one who shed a few dramatic tears of longing for a summer past while packing school lunches this morning.
Don’t get me wrong, I had plenty of sarcastic things to say during the twelve weeks of summer, but having spent June, July and August in country club whites, frolicking on clay courts and swinging golf clubs on brilliantly verdant greens, I have learned to temper my tendency towards judgmental bitchiness. After all, I had willingly joined the country club ranks, thankful to be shepherding my O and G from golf lessons to swim team to tennis. So grateful to have schedule and purpose and some place to go once the crows began jeering at dawn. Golf lessons start early, people. Seize the day and the early bird gets the worm and enjoy the sunrise are all terms I imagine were originally uttered by golfers. My O and G with their tendency to rise with the sun were apparently born golfers.
It would have been all too easy to entertain you with tales of swim meets attended by plump mothers wearing pastel frocks patterned with elephants and sea horses and sporting large straw hats, pacing frantically poolside, screaming their child’s name, names like Chip and Grant and Cody. “Pull, Cody. Pull!” Blood vessels popping and vocal chords straining to be heard above the cacophony of sixty other mothers mopping the sweat of maternal good intentions from regularly botoxed brows.
But I think you all would have found it unbearably disgusting to hear me whine about being the country club pariah having clumsily taken up defense for the good intentioned clubhouse chef who had made the doomed decision to make a gourmet version of lobster salad, using a basil vinaigrette rather than the usual gobs of mayonnaise. I was promptly informed that club food should not be, culinarily speaking, avant garde and the traditional mayonnaise based variety of lobster salad quickly returned to the menu. This was an important controversy that consumed the Lilly Pulitzer set until they found fresher topics to discuss, like whether or not spraying the six year old swimmers with cooking spray before swim meets violates league swim meet rules.
Having learned my lesson, I did not weigh in on pre-swim meet greasing nor did I even lift an eyebrow when a fully clothed mother dove into the pool in order to stop her eight year old from completing a full lap during a free-style false start. I demurely placed my hand over my growing smirk when I heard her explain, great rivulets of pool water running out from beneath her pink and green skort, “I couldn’t watch him expend all his energy on a false start, ruining his chances of winning first place in the heat. He was an All Star last year. He NEEDS to be an All Star again.”
I managed to keep the lips zipped until, late summer, when I heard the vicious growl of rumor starting. The eighteen year golf pro had, rather embarrassingly, been caught streaking through the center of town after consuming the better half of a twelve pack at a local party. There were parents who imagined this handsome collegiate athlete just seconds away from becoming a sexual predator, apparently having forgotten that public nudity and excessive alcohol consumption are typical summer pastimes for the heterosexual male adolescent. I politely pointed out that I couldn’t be less concerned about his intentions towards my children seeing as there were quite probably six or seven beautiful, blonde co-eds he was desperate to impress with his beer swilling abilities. I was quick to add that nude sprinting down Main Street on a balmy August night was an altogether acceptable punishment for having lost the keg-stand contest.
After that outburst I received very little attention beyond a few hard stares and some less than subtle whispering in my vicinity.
In the echoes of silence, I did plenty of mental calisthenics, agonizing over having endorsed the privilege and excess of a country club summer. Eventually I came to terms with having spent a year’s college tuition on our club membership. The moment of epiphany and sweet existential relief came when another young mother leaned over and whispered a term that I had never heard before. She delivered the new phrase in a polished tone that dismissed objections outright. She said, “You know, we’re doing our children such a great service, giving them early instruction in the essential “life sports”. I nodded, indicating that I concurred. My chin dipped towards my chest in the universal sign of, “Why yes, ‘life sports’ are gravely important and the key to the normal development of the American child.” And, I quietly watched my O hit yet another forehand over the fence and into the lake.
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11 Responses to “Silent Summer”
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She is back!!!!
hooray!
must spread the word.
welcome back CCE.
i laughed so hard at that chip grant and cody bit
(pull cody pull!)
i happen to know one chip, hahaha.
he would so get a kick out of this post.
i should direct him here.
big sigh.
welcome home, dear friend.
At least you respond in some fashion to these wacked-out mothers. I shut down completely in face of their anxiety and competimommy tricks.
They think I’m catatonic.
Fine by me.
Well, I’ll take you reserved and tentative over absent any day, but I get why you left.
I’d be happy to read once every ten days, in my life sports whites, of course
YOU’RE BACK! YOU’RE BACK! YOU’VE BEEN MUCH MISSED BY ME!!!
Welcome back!
Wow…is that really your…yard??
You’ll be happy to know that O and G have hung up the ‘life sports’ whites and are now deeply immersed in the soccer season. Soccer seems to be the perfect antidote for a summer of ‘life sports’… a lot of grunting and pushing and tripping one another in the effort to guide that white and black ball towards the goal and pound it through some poor grade schooler cowering in the net. The sidelines are still populated by competimommies but the competidaddies far out shine the females in their overzealousness. It’s a refreshing change. And no one, I mean no one has dared show up in their Lilly Pulitzer.
You walk out on me without a word. Now you expect me to take you back in? Eff off, I say. I’ll need something beyond chip, grant and cody. before I even begin to forgive you. Give me juicy, embarrassing gossip.
Anyway some of you might be interested in the work of Carol Dweck. Her recent book is, “Self-theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development.”
Welcome back!!! You were missed.
Looks like you’ve hit the ground running… could it be result of all those early morning golf lessons???
Oh! I almost forgot. The pics on today’s post are crepe myrtles, not lilacs. And they’re probaby 12 foot tall!
Regarding the blurb I posted about Carol Dweck… on re-reading it, it lacks context. The reason I raised Dweck is because she rails against the hyperbolic parenting one sees so often on display at sports meets like CCE describes.
Dweck, a psychologist at Stanford University, argues that you can teach a child to maximize his/her potential even if they don’t always get to be “All-Star” swimmers, earn A+ grades, or score a 9.9 on the APGAR.
Yay, you’re back!