Summer is such a different season when you are a parent living in one of the most expensive cities in the country than it was, say, when you were a kid growing up in a rural New England town with lots of nearby lakes and ponds to swim in and gravel roads to bike on.
That’s what we did when I was a kid – we went to the lake to swim and rode our bikes around. Sure, we got bored, but the main thing was that it was summer, there was no school and there were plenty of inner tubes to go around.
Now that I’m an adult raising a family in New York City, while I would not wish the whiteness of the town I grew up in on anyone, much less my son, I kind of miss the ease of what pretty much amounted to free summers.
Now we start the planning and the deposit-making for 10 weeks of summer camps in early May (although it always takes me until the last minute to sort all the financials and health forms required), and if we are very lucky, a few days or a week out in the Hamptons or Montauk by way of our weller-to-do friends. We also try to spend some time in my hometown, where the grass is lush and the air seeps into your lungs like some kind of purification process.
But my son is a city kid, and he always gets restless after a few days (as do I). He misses his pals, black people, the icy man, cool movie theaters within walking distance, and the weeklong camps where days are filled with soccer and hoops and parkour, indoor pools and outdoor sprinklers, and in-depth conversations about Madden Mobile.
So what I’m looking forward to the most are the days when my son comes home from camp, and my husband and I both finish our work days – and we are all exhausted, but the sun is still high, the jingle of the ice cream truck competes with Puerto Rican music blaring from wide open windows on our block, where kids take turns squealing their way through the spray of a fire hydrant. Because despite the swelter, the smell of sizzling garbage and the persistently overcrowded sidewalks commandeered by tourists, summer in New York City marks the meridian of our livelihood. It is a testament to who we are as a family, and as New Yorkers.
