I find myself uttering the hackneyed phrase you don’t know how lucky you are, daily, sounding like my parents and their parents before them and wondering when I turned into my Nana, convinced that I’m but moments away from donning a bathing cap and doing the breast stroke in the lap lane. And, like all children the world over, since time began, my children successfully ignore my reprimands and scolding, my attempts to remind them that in other parts of the world, hell, in other parts of town, whole families live in tents and share bedding with their sisters.

It strikes me that lucky is a relative concept. There is always bigger, better, more and until a person experience smaller, worse and less, true understanding is just not possible. And so it is that I am contemplating developing a Fresh Air exchange program in which we invite lower-income children from Detroit, Trenton and the Bronx to come to our town for the week and work on their butterfly kick, their golf swing and the proper construction of a sand mansion while my kids take their places in their inner-city neighborhoods, delivered there by Greyhound with only a knapsack and twenty dollars stuffed in their pockets. There they will learn about dodging street fire and they will come to know the stench of urine in the stairwell on a humid summer afternoon. They will play among the shards of glass and look forward to neighborhood children yelling ‘Narcos’ whenever the police ride ’round the block to hassle the petty dealers. There they will learn to associate the summer evenings with the sounds of sirens and car alarms and the occasional domestic dispute that has spilled out into the hallway. Maybe then, when I get them back, a little strung out, sleep deprived, a whole lot wiser, will they get what I mean by lucky.

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.

Morning reveille no earlier than nine a.m. (all children will be barricaded behind bedroom doors until that humane hour regardless of whining, knocking or attempts to climb out of windows).

9-10 a.m. Children will learn the value of blog surfing; watching their camp counselor catch up on newsworthy events on familiar blogs while begging camp counselor to PLEASE get them something to eat. (She will mutter something like, “Get it your damn selves” under her breath and then blog about hating her role as camp counselor.)

10-12 a.m. All children will be expected to participate in a rousing game of spread the mulch. This is an activity which will allow the children to study the various flora and fauna that have taken up residence in the mound of pine bark that’s been sitting on the driveway since early May. Toads, centipedes, spiders, carpenter ants, no end to creepy crawlies, and enough toil and misery to earn them valuable scarring memories about which to bitch in psychotherapy later in life.

12-2 p.m. An altered version of Kick the Can will be played, in which children are set free to roam around the neighborhood knocking on doors and begging some other parent to entertain them for a few hours. This activity is meant to engender independence and resilience and hone their begging (I mean social skills) as well as offer a reprieve from the camp counselor who is now ready to administer spankings and time outs at a moment’s notice.

2-3 p.m. Children return to campus to whine and loll about and drag on camp counselor’s sleeves while supposedly “having quiet time” in their rooms. This is the perfect opportunity for children to daydream or play lego or write on the walls of their closets “SOS- My house is SOOOO boring. Please, someone save me!”

3-4 p.m. It’s scavenger hunt time. All children will be piled into the car and the hunt will begin. Cleverly, the camp counselor will be sure that each hunt takes place in familiar local settings to include: grocery store, Home Depot, Marshalls and the Post Office. Patience, perseverance and respect for authority will be topics addressed during this daily activity.

4-5 p.m. Children will be parked in front of a computer screen and asked to remain there until coming up with a clever topic for the camp counselor’s daily blog-posting. If this task is completed too quickly the child will then be asked to write the post while the camp counselor tucks into a huge cocktail.

ll 5-7 p.m. Evening will be spent playing a sort of dodgeball that CCE has dubbed Dodge the Blood Suckers. All children will conduct evening weeding exercises while enjoying the cool beauty of a summer evening and jogging in place to avoid great drifts of mosquitoes that are, frankly, an important part of the camp experience.

7-8 p.m. All children are required to scrub the filth of the day from scabby knees and from under fingernails. There will be nightly inspections to ensure that scrubbing has been adequately conducted.

8-8:15 p.m. Camp counselor will see that all children are safely in bed, squashing all requests for water or another story.

8:15-10 p.m. Camp counselor will tuck into another cocktail and proceed to get very drunk before falling asleep on the couch while watching back episodes of The Shield.

Stay tuned for an update on changes of schedule and additional activities offered throughout the summer.