The Summer of Us

It’s been almost eleven years. Eleven years since my wife, Lauren, and I have had freedom.  Freedom from having to revolve our days around our kids.  What did we do with ourselves back then?  Did we just party all day?  Who could even remember back that far?  It was four houses ago. We were living in Brooklyn during Lauren’s residency and I don’t have a clue what our free time was like.  I know at one point we got up at 5:30 every morning for 90 straight days and did P90x workouts which were all the rage back then. These days when I wake up at 5:30, it’s to pee for the third time since going to bed.

Now we need to relearn what it means to be free from carpooling and getting meals ready for them and making sure they do what’s required to be humans like brushing their teeth twice a day.  

This is our reality now and for the next seven weeks while our kids are away at sleepaway camp.  Our ten-year-old daughter Liv was away last summer, but for the first time our nine-year-old son Max has joined her. 

The first day without them has not gone as planned. I pictured romance and napping and more romance. Instead we have both been refreshing the App Waldo which is an app that identifies photos of your kids at camp. How it does it I have no idea, but we’re both obsessed with finding all photos of them and determining if they’re happy or not. We’re especially concerned with Max as it’s his first days being away from us ever and I can’t imagine he will do well. 

Lauren took a brief break while I continued to refresh the app.  I walked downstairs and found her outside taking our barbecue grill apart. 

Me:  What are you doing?

Lauren:  The barbecue needs a good cleaning. 

Me:  No, it doesn’t. Barbecues are meant to be dirty. It makes the food taste better.

Lauren:  No, it doesn’t.  

Lauren has removed all 87 parts of the barbecue. 

Me: You’re going to remember how to put this back together? 

Lauren:  Yes.  Relax, it’s therapeutic. 

The truth is we both had been planning to do everything we had been neglecting to do since we had kids.  On the agenda – clean out the pantry and throw all junk food out; clean out the trunks of our cars which might contain dead bodies and we wouldn’t even know it they’re so full. 

Lauren: I want to catch up on my albums.  

Me: What’s the last album you did?

Lauren: Aruba 2015. 

Me: This is very stressful.  You’re stressing me out.  We have too much to do and only 7 weeks to do it.  

Just then, we get a notification that there’s new photos of our kids on the app. We rush to open it like a man in the desert finding water.  

Max is wearing a tank top and holding two fingers up indicating peace, which I guess is a good thing. He is wearing clothing and seems to still have all his extremities. He’s not smiling, though, so this picture is only a 7 out of 10 on the scale of happy camper. 

Lauren: Brett, you need to clean out your work bag.  It’s a disaster. 

Me: Why do you care so much about my workbag?

Lauren: I don’t. I’m just giving you things to do. 

Me: Don’t worry about me. I have plenty of things to do. 

Lauren:  Wait, new photo of Liv.  

I look over Lauren’s shoulder at the phone. 

Me: She looks so skinny in that bathing suit. You think she’s eating? 

Lauren: She went to camp yesterday. How could she lose so much weight in one day? 

Me: Should we email them and ask if she’s eating?

Lauren: It’s one day. Let’s give it a few days. 

We’re nuts. I know it. But this whole process is just as nuts. In fact, the whole concept of sleepaway camp is so weird.  On a basic level, you’re paying for people to babysit your kids for seven weeks. Except they’re also learning to be independent – to exist and survive away from the nest.  Except we’re watching and analyzing every step of the way through these photos. Not to mention that the technology which has made their childhood so different from all generations before them, that they rely on 45 weeks of the year, is also now being detoxed out of them. The babysitting and detox alone make it worth every penny. 

Yet I miss them terribly and want to see them. You see, that’s the thing that I didn’t see coming. I was looking forward to all this freedom, yet I didn’t realize how much my identity had become Dad.  Who am I besides their dad on mornings, nights and weekends? I need to find that out. 

Lauren: You should start writing again. That will help you figure it out. 

Me: You know my typing fingers fell off. 

Lauren: Well, reattach them. 

Me: Lauren, I write about parenthood. We literally have no kids in our lives at the moment. 

Lauren: So write about that. 

Me: Fine. 

Well, now that I’ve written again, it’s time to go back to refreshing this stupid app. Then it will be time to clean out the expired pill bottles in my bathroom drawer. Then, who knows! I’m so busy.  No time for anything. Well that’s that’s not true. There’s always time for:

Me: Romance?

Lauren: A new photo!!