Guest post by Sylvia Spruck Wrigley
Summer is fading already; I'm starting to glance at the date and do a
mental countdown - not long left until boarding school starts again. My
stomach tightens at the thought; I'm very proud of the education my
baby is getting but I'll never get used to sending my child away. At
the end of summer, it feels like I've ended up losing custody of my
only son as I'm reduced to weekends-only parenting until the first
break in October.
And I know that if I'm feeling this way, Alex must be too: watching
those last sands drop through the hour glass, the school grind about to
restart. Ugh.
But I'm his mother, not his friend. So instead of simply sympathising,
I end up lecturing. He has spent plenty of time lazing around the
house, he should be making better use of his time!
"Get out of the house," I told him. "Your future self will never ever
regret that you could have spent more time playing video games over the
summer."
He gave me a dubious look.
"Honestly! There has never been a reported case of someone saying,
'This summer, I could have watched so much television - but no, I
wasted it all going out and doing things. I'll never make that mistake
again!' Not a single case, Alex. Ever."
"I'll think about it," he told me grudgingly.
"Make a list of all the things you'd like to get done by the end of the holidays," I said. "I'll do it too!"
And I did, making a big production of sitting at the table with a notebook, "thinking aloud" as I wrote my list.
It's true that I don't organise my free time as well as I should. Most
evenings will find me at the computer with a glass of red wine,
giggling at blog posts that other people have written. And while this
isn't a bad thing, I have to admit I don't think my future self will
thank me.
I made a list of interesting things I could be doing with my free time:
swimming in the sea, birdwatching in the hills behind our house, taking
photographs, reading classic novels. I left the list lying on the
coffee table in plain view and then, because I'm not totally
unreasonable, I dropped the subject for the rest of the day.
So imagine my surprise when he broached it again at dinner, without any prompting at all.
"I thought about what you said, about what I wanted to achieve."
I'm amazed that he's been this receptive. "And...?"
"And I think you are right."
Result! I positively glowed with admiration at my good parenting.
"That's good," I told him. "That's great! So are you going to make a
list?"
"Don't need one. I want to be very focused on a single goal." He
shovelled another bite of food into his mouth. I waited to hear this
lofty achievement that my son had chosen to aim for.
"I want to get the perfect tan."
I managed to swallow before laughing. "That's not a goal!"
"It's serious, Mom! The other boys laugh at me when I say I live in
Spain, because I'm so pale. So I'm going to sit out in the sun and get
tanned before I get back."
Every person in his genetic tree is northern European and deathly pale
going back as many generations as I can possibly count. He's unlikely
to go olive. I'll be amazed if he manages off-white.
But obviously, I know what he's after. Getting the perfect tan will, of
course, mean sitting outside by the pool, dreaming the remaining
summer days away. Listening to music on the iPod and rereading
favourite comic books. Lying on the lounger with a cold drink and the
warm sunlight playing on lightly oiled skin...
Come to think of it, it doesn't sound that bad.
Do you think it's OK if I take the laptop?
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