Things change slowly (and then all at once)

For the first time in about 30 years, I don't hate summer. Also, great murder mystery to listen to and an ode to kale.

I ran into a mom I’ve known for a long time while I was wasting time shopping before an appointment on Saturday. She’s got a whole passel of kids who are a little bit younger than my own gang, with her youngest starting senior year of high school in September. She filled me in on what the older kids were up to and how she’s shuttling some kids back for the fall semester, getting used to others moving back home post-college, and wishing the summer would kind of just end already.

“It’s a lot,” she said laughing, and I was like, “I hear you sister.”

As I was walking the dog the other morning, the air cooler than it’s been without all the sticky humidity clinging to my arms and legs, I thought about how quickly the summer was going. My college kid will be heading back to school in less than two weeks and I think it’s probably the first summer in 30 years that I haven’t wished for September to come. Fast.

For the first time, I haven’t felt suffocated by the endless days of teenagers lying around watching The Vampire Diaries and barely working. Going out every night at 9:30. Waking up to pieces of Tostitos scattered all over the floor and big glops of salsa on the marble counter from late-night snacking. Me asking for the millionth time if they’ve gotten any further in their summer reading for school or started filling out the Common App to offset last-minute college application hysteria (my own) in a few months. I remember those summers as being all hot and full of tension and feeling like when you bite into a sandwich at the beach and realize sand had infiltrated your meal and how you could feel the occasional grit as you chewed. Like, even though in theory it was supposed to be great, it wasn’t.

And that’s just when the kids were older, never mind when they were young and I’d spend my summers shuttling everyone to swim meets and practices and the library and sports camps and part-time jobs and anything I could think of to keep them busy and not asking me 10 times a day what’s for dinner.

The friend I ran into said she recently heard someone say that you only get 18 summers with your kids. “Then how come I’ve had like 27?” she joked. Like me, she has been in the mom game for a really long time.

This is all not to say that there weren’t many lovely things that I got to do in the summertime when the kids were young. I loved cheering for them on the side of the pool at swim meets, watching their little faces turn up from the over-chlorinated water for air; their arms covered in Sharpie marker to remember race numbers and heats, which propelled them down the endless lane. At night, we would go out into our deep backyard and catch fireflies with the sound of frogs croaking from a nearby pond as our soundtrack. Then we’d sift through a stack of library books on one of their twin beds and I’d lie propped up on pillows to start reading, surrounded by their freshly showered bodies that still smelled a little like suntan lotion, their wet heads tucked under my arms.

What was not to love about that?

This summer has mostly been me and my son who’s home from college, and he’s not an easy one to pin down. He’s either making pizza dough all day at his job on the Asbury Park boardwalk or going to his dad’s or golfing with friends. When I have been able to guilt him into spending time with me, we’ve sat in front of our big TV and watched the last season of Ted Lasso together and season 2 of a series we started last year called “Evil” (it’s absolutely mental and we spend the bulk of the 50-minute episodes complaining about the main character).  

My days are filled with dog walks to the beach and working for Corporate America, which now includes going into an office twice a week in actual clothes (something I secretly love to do). I’ve seen the older kids a couple of times this summer but mostly, I’m doing my own thing. In fact, my life could not look any different today than it did 10 years ago. It’s like I’m Bizzaro Amy living in an upside-down world, like Superman’s evil-ish doppelganger or the Seinfeld episode where everyone is the same, but different.

It's funny how life changes so slowly and yet, so suddenly. One minute you’re packing a cooler with enough juice boxes and fruit roll-ups to last a week and yelling at everyone to get in the car at 8 a.m., and the next you’re riding a bike to the beach with a small bag in a basket on your handlebars.

If we do it right, we can have so many different chapters of our lives (especially as women). The key, I think, is to be able to accept where you are and go with the flow. In truth, I resisted that for a long time. I wanted to stay in that mommy mode, even though it no longer served me. Even though I was ready to move on, it was a role I knew very well, and was pretty scared to try on something new.

Life can be scary, guys.

And once you make one big change (for me, it was when I decided to stop drinking booze), everything else starts to shift. One shift begets another and all of a sudden, you’re sitting on the porch of a house you’ve rented near the beach, typing away on your laptop while birds chatter nonstop from the overgrown roses climbing up the side of your neighbor’s porch.

You’re still the same. But also different. You’re not sure what’s next, but you tell yourself you’re ready. You remember the saying you used to hear in recovery meetings, how God didn’t take you this far, just to take you this far.

Then you close your laptop and start your day.

sunday shares: read + watch + cook + buy

• Why can’t I live in a Ted Lasso world? Despite hearing a lot of detractors saying the final episode of everybody’s favorite antidote to the pandemic was a little too cloying, I loved Season 3 as much as (maybe more?) that iconic first season. In particular, I loved watching with my son who also adored the season. It may be a little pie-in-the-sky and sometimes even downright goofy (the Sound of Music, really?), but I’d rather live in that world than in some of the more righteous and contentious parts of our actual world. Lasso for the win.

• When murders are downright entertaining. I flew through Season 2 of “Only Murders in the Building,” which I had been resisting until I had like nothing left to watch. I couldn’t really get into the first season as they set up characters and storylines and watched it in drips and drabs until the end. So maybe I went into the next season with super low expectations? The setting is terrific and the cast is stellar. Also, fun fact, my mom says either her godmother or grandmother lived in that Upper West Side building (but I do not believe either was involved in a homicide).

• Another murder mystery to keep you company. I also flew through listening to Rebecca Makkai’s novel, “I Have Some Questions For You.” 1980s murder at a New Hampshire boarding school that questions whether the wrong man was convicted for the crime. Also involving a podcast (I guess this is becoming a trope). Loved how it jumped between the two timelines and anything narrated by Julia Whalen just sounds fantastic.

• When giving a massage is also good for you. For some reason, I recently bought a plastic tub of kale, something I generally don’t do. But I was inspired by a salad Katie Couric had posted, but then realized the only ingredient I had on hand was the kale. So after a quick search, I landed on this super simple recipe (pretty much massage olive oil and lemon into the kale for a few minutes and then sprinkle with nutritional yeast) from the food blog Umami Girl, and I am obsessed. I just threw on some grilled chicken I had and some avocado and pumpkin seeds and I ate it for lunch and dinner. I’m pro kale.

• A backpedal on shorts. You know how at the beginning of the summer I was all, “I will never expose my arms and legs again?” And then how it got really hot? Like, so hot that I needed everything off my arms and legs? I bought these baggy jean shorts from Madewell for the Beyonce concert thinking I’d never wear them again and now, I wear them all the time. Looks like they’re on sale now, too, so you can be cool, trendy, and money-conscious all at once.