Let's Give Summer a Second Chance.

As I am moving the school desks out of the way, and packing up any last minute things to store at the house - it is really hitting me that summer has arrived. We are most lucky in that all of us have the summers off together. Being a counselor, and thus taking on the added weight of other people's dilemmas - Jessica's job is significantly more taxing than mine, and she always needs (and deserves) those summer months to refuel her passions and drive. I need them for reflection and physical stuff - body fuels the mind, ya know. But all four of us really just need time together, to be us.
And I recall vividly that this time last year Jessica and I were often talking about how amazing and great our upcoming summer was going to be. The first year of Avery's life had been challenging for us in the way that every parent experiences the challenge of having a newborn. He was particularly tough sometimes, and slept very little. So we were excited about the summer months. We had to pay for preschool anyway, so we could take the boys there when we needed to, and enjoy some time together. We did take advantage of that last summer, but by last August we did not feel refueled or fulfilled by our lives. Instead we just felt out of balance and distracted.

It is fair to say that last summer we had a swing and a big miss. The mission was not accomplished.

We just did not have it together last summer. We had spent a lot of time traveling for the sake of obligatory traveling - even though neither us, nor the kids, were very excited about many of the trips. We were still so overwhelmed with having two small children that we had stopped making any effort to spend time with our good friends. Instead, we just relied on convenience: we would see our neighbors when we saw them, and we never saw our close friends. In our business, we had just sort of taken the last two years "off" and had given ourselves a pass for everything that mattered. Living completely without intention, we would check in with our "close friends" on facebook or by text - even though great people lived within 5 miles of us, and we were not spending real time with them. We were just drowning in distraction and lack of vision. We were waiting to do things, instead of living.

And now we are at the beginning of another summer of promise - and we have made many, many changes in our lives. We shifted our perspective and realized that our family life is the end goal, and we do not want to "live through" any of it, just because it is hard. In order to best do that, we had to simplify things. Much like what is written here - it occurred to us that much of the modern world (though not all) is nothing more than the world's largest distractor from the marrow of life. So, eventually we just gave away a television, took an extended break from facebook, sold our suburban house, traded down for basic telephones where we have to talk to humans - and just stopped trying to retrieve, keep up, share, and manage our world - and started trying to live it again. That was around a year ago - And we are happier than ever.

But perhaps the most tangible symbol of those changes is our new, old house. And living in our little old house is everything that I hoped it would turn out to be, so far. We spend all of our time outside. We watch very little TV. We walk to the library weekly. We dance more. We are wearing out the wagon. We eat a lot of ice cream. And we make time to be with good people - people who inspire us. And soon we will be kayaking through the marsh at Hilton Head.

So here's to Round Two! Here' to the great summer of 2011!