What I learned this summer, by Jen Laird White.

First thing…it’s about two weeks too long and when you throw the Jewish holidays in there after TWO DAYS, two measly days, OF SCHOOL….I just don’t think God, whoever he or she is, would do such a thing. Particularly if she is a she.  There is not a she on this earth or floating above it that would have mothers do the whole back to school, let’s get on a schedule, get out of bed, make the lunch, do you have your backpack, here are your socks, did you brush your teeth, forget about making your bed well do that next week routine for two days, TWO DAYS and then CANCEL SCHOOL for god related reasons.  No god is cruel enough to taunt a mother with the two days of freedom, two days after a summer of running Camp Mommy, two days to do something that actually involves being a human not a mother only to snatch that new found freedom away for the Jewish holidays.  And can I point out that it wasn’t even the most solemn of Jewish holidays that we got off.  But don’t get me started.  Let us just say that this is a decision clearly not made by god but by a schoolboard largely made up of men and those with grown children.  And  let us just say that nice mommy was really and truly mean mommy by the end of it all.  I was even scared of me.  But it’s over.  And I’m sitting at the computer.

So what did I learn during the seventy three days but who’s counting that make up our summer holiday?  Plus the four for the lesser of the serious Jewish holidays.  A lot.  LOT.  I think I’ll just itemize.

1.  I learned that there is nothing like people who have known you since you didn’t have boobs.  And when you still weighed below one hundred without any sort of eating disorder.  Connie.  My best friend Connie.  Who disappeared into the abyss of life and jobs some six years ago never to be heard from, well, until this summer.  And that’s only because I Facebooked her.  Best thing I did all summer other than using more sunscreen and drinking slightly less. Connie, it turns out, has moved back within seventy miles of me and was two miles from the VERY BEACH I was sitting on all summer during the very week I Facebooked her.  She came over.  We laughed at the same things we always laugh at even though she’s a very important sociologist, A DOCTAH, Dr. GAGER,  who gets quoted in the Wall Street Journal and on NPR about things as entertaining as division of labor in the home and how it impacts sex lives.  She’s gotten tons of press lately with a study she did that indicated that couples who do more housework have more sex.  http://www.bottomlinesecrets.com/article.html?article_id=100001457 Now, I completely and foolishly misunderstood this study to say that couples who have a more equal division of household tasks have more sex.  Like, if you get off your damn ass and help me pick up and do the laundry or the grocery shopping once in a while, maybe do a little math homework with the kids or take the dog for a walk or, christ, feed the gerbils, well then, I might be motivated to put on something silky, slinky and or expensively wedgie producing, hell, even if I can’t motivate to get out of the sweats and the t shirt, I still might be appreciative enough of your effort with the gerbils to, in fact, engage in some craziness.  As my Norwegian sister in law pointed out in a discussion of this study over drinks with my brother, spouse and father, all of whom saw fit to argue the finer points of why this study could not possibly be accurate (merely to avoid having to feed gerbils in exchange for sex…and it does sound demeaning when put that way but no less demeaning than putting on underwear that gives you a wedgie or a nightgown that needs to be handwashed)..so the sister in law, with a pleading look on her face said to my brother…”But couldn’t we try?”  Turns out what the study really says is that couples with lots of energy do more housework and THUS have more sex.  Doesn’t matter who’s doing the housework, the sex still comes.  And it doesn’t even matter if the house gets really clean.  I am not going to get into our sex life but all I am going to say is that I have a very, very messy house, so messy that it will never, ever be clean until I am dead.  And that will be because someone else will live here.    It is so messy that a friend once wrote about it for a story in a Florida paper.  NO shit.  That said, we clean.  A lot.  A place this messy needs a lot of cleaning so that you can actually live and eat.   The pet hair alone occupies hours.  Even though it never gets better than less messy.  As I’m typing this I’m suddenly wondering about the sex lives of cleaning ladies. Although I don’t think I’m worried about Rich and Gladys.

SO enough about Connie’s research.  And just a little more about Connie.  Can I tell you, the minute I saw her face it was as if six years had never happened.  Heck, it was as if 35 years had never happened.  We were the same as we’ve always been even if both our asses and our problems were bigger and our faces showed, oh, just the tiniest gentle hint of wear and tear as yet untouched by botox and restylyn.  We had a bunch of marriages and divorces and jobs and scandals and problems and sicknesses and deaths and failures and successes between us and we sat on that beach and laughed til we cried.  So what did I learn?  I learned that you don’t let good friends disappear because they will always remind you of who you are.

2.  I learned that even if I think it’s funny to bitch about it, my favorite thing in the world is hanging with my kids.

3.  I learned that, in an excellent example of Smoke and Mirrors, a blow out can make you look more beautiful but a blow job will only get you jewelry.  But you’ll have to wear the wedgie underwear?  It’s always a trade off.

4.  That I was right last fall when I blogged about doing something that scares you each summer.  Nothing clears the pipes like a little terror.  So what did I do?  Well, I rode the Cyclone on Coney Island.  I used to do it all the time when I was young and single.  It was a quick pick me up for depression and hangovers.  Take the A train to Coney Island, ride the Cyclone twice and go back to Manhattan.  You could not stay sad on the Cyclone and the sweating it produced quickly drained left over alcohol.  I hadn’t done it in ten years since my stepkids were little.  Can I be honest here?  I got off and my legs were shaking, partly because, well, yes, I was afraid.  But why was I afraid?  Well mostly because, for some fucked up reason, I thought that because my eight year old, the worlds TALLEST eight year old, hit the height requirement mark he should be allowed to ride it even though I am certain that there were no other eight year olds within a hundred miles who would have been allowed to ride because, DUH, they were too small and DUH not yet emotionally ready for such terror.  His brother and friend convinced him it was the best thing he’d ever do and because he was tall enough,  I somehow succumbed to child pressure(more potent than any peer pressure you ever experienced while standing behind the library with Brian Matthews trying to decide whether or not having a puff on that cigarette would ruin your life) and thought…heck let’s let the innocent little boy who rarely stays in his own bed alone for the night and is afraid of everything from having his head under water to any stranger even if, and perhaps rightfully so, they are 107, sure, lets let him have the experience of riding the most terrifying roller coaster ever at the ungodly young age of eight.  Excellent idea, MOMMY.  Once on it I realized that it was entirely possible that he was going to pop out and fly over Astroland into the crowd on the beach, hundreds of feet below.  My god, if the fall didn’t kill him, the exposure to near naked thong clad bottoms the size of a Volkswagon buses, NOT BUGS, surely would.  Or at least rightfully cement his fear of strangers forever.  When it was all over my legs shook for half an hour and Luke said it was the best thing he’d ever done.  And maybe I did feel at least fifteen minutes younger.

The second thing I did was go tubing on Lake Champlain behind the boat of my sisters daredevil boyfriend.  My sister and I went together, clinging desperately to an enormous yellow rubber tube traveling over the freezing water at what felt like sixty miles an hour (we were assured it was only fifteen), discs straining, jowls tossing as we bounced on the waves, full wedgies produced by the odd position that no body over twelve should ever attempt, revealing our middle aged butt cheeks to the sky and to the passengers of the afternoon NY to VT ferry which my sisters beau thought we should buzz at really close range, no doubt stunning said passengers into dismayed silence at their ruined sunlit trip across calm waters and culminating in, yes, me wetting my pants, which wasn’t really so dire given that I was wearing not pants but my bathing suit, my bathing suit was already so far up my ass it was as though I was naked and I could leap off the tube into Lake Champlain to rinse off both me and the tube.  I felt a bit bad for my sister but I’m certain it wasn’t the first time I’d pissed on her leg.

I recommend something akin to these adventures to all.  Although be careful whose leg you piss on.

5.  I learned that we are only the product of those who came before us, neither more clever nor more wise.  Take a look at this obituary of Barbara Holland who died this week.  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/books/14holland.html She was our kind of girl.  Barbara Holland actually wrote books and made a name for herself, a big enough name to get a Times obit with a photo, about the joyous benefits of smoking, drinking and bacon.  She literally wrote a book titled “The Joy of Drinking”.  I don’t mind not eating bacon, I had to give up smoking though I miss it most every day of my life…and I live in fear of having to give up drinking.  As my friend Mary says “I never want to be an alcoholic.  I’d hate to have to quit drinking.”  Mary was serious.

6.  I learned that life, like summer, even though it seems like it’s taking forever, comes and goes in a flash.  That it wasn’t really just yesterday that you got your first crush or had your first beer or kiss or bought your first bra if you can call that sad pancake like thing they called a training bra a bra that you were pressured to buy because “everyone had them” that made the saleswoman look at your mother as if to say “What the fuck, a bra? For her?  Not for a few more years, sister?”  You didn’t just finish grade school or middle school or high school or college (although some of us never did complete that step).  You are not getting younger, you are getting better only in some ways and A LOT worse in others.  Knees hurt, faces sag, sadder still, butts really sag and people you love start to disappear.  That, damn it, you probably will never have another cigarette or that giddy head rush that starts a love affair or ever, ever wear a true mini skirt and have construction workers hoot.  Yeah, you might wear the skirt but, trust me, baby, the hootings stopped.  There are people you wonder about that you really will never see again and people you love who will die.  It’s not okay but it is what it is.  This is the summer I started to see the end.  I am sure it’s because I will hit the half century mark in March.  The process of reaching fifty will, I’m sure, make me itchy and moody and full of crisis.  It might make me go to a plastic surgeon…you know, just for a consult.  Maybe it will make me funnier but either way I’m not sure it’s a bad thing.  And like I have a choice?  My boys had a great summer.  And I had a great summer because they did.  They still have the time to turn down that cigarette(yeah, right) and have that first beer and date the most beautiful girl they’ve ever seen.  They will drive too fast and drink till they throw up and have their hearts broken and break a few on their own.  I hope they don’t want a bra but if they do, well, so be it.  Every day they will do something new that amazes them or frightens them or teaches them. They will fail and succeed and they WILL finish college, damn it all.  And I’ll watch them do it and turn to my husband or call my friends or my family to laugh about when we did it too. And every now and then I’ll ride the Cyclone.  And feel my legs shake.  But I don’t think I can take the tubing.  In a very few years, I’m sure I won’t need it to pee on my own leg.