When I was a child, summer on Martha’s Vineyard meant walking barefoot to the Ben Franklin for penny candy, tipping over on purpose in the Sunfish, and endless games of ping-pong at the Vineyard Haven Yacht Club, followed by grilled-cheese sandwiches and milkshakes for lunch. I loved the fact that all of these things – and more – could be done without the involvement of parents; summer life was unstructured, independent, and fun.

All summer, my friends and I looked forward to the Ag Fair, but once it ended, reality set in: summer was almost over, and school loomed darkly on the horizon. The mere thought of Labor Day, and returning to school, brought a sinking feeling to the pit of my stomach.

Funny how things change. Years later, as the mother of two small children, I got that same sinking feeling when I thought of the kids’ preschool closing for summer break. What I stood to lose was precisely what I lost by returning to school as a child: my freedom. Being home alone with two small children meant re-reading Pat the Bunny and Goodnight Moon for the eightieth time; endless applications of sunscreen; standing guard to make sure nobody drowned in the kiddie pool; and loud, tearful arguments in the grocery store over who got to ride in the cart. When school resumed in the fall, I danced the same jig I’d danced as a kid when school let out for the summer.

But now that my children are older and able to do things with me that I enjoy too, my feelings at the beginning of the new school year have grown more mixed. On the one hand, as a person who works at home and requires chunks of quiet time for writing, I welcome those six-hour, school-time stretches all to myself. On the other hand, I miss the spontaneous summertime decisions to go to a friend’s pool, play a game of Trouble, or pick berries for the morning pancakes. And, of course, I’m glad not to have to fight the nightly homework wars. While I welcome the ease and discipline of the more structured lifestyle that school requires, I miss the summer’s extra hour of sleep in the morning, and the fact that if you decide not to send your children to camp for a few days, no one really minds.

Parents with kids in the same age group as mine (old enough to swim, not old enough to be seriously interested in the opposite sex) seem to feel the same.
“I always think of that commercial where the guy is skipping through the aisles, back-to-school shopping,” says Margaret D’Angelo of West Tisbury, a high school teacher and mother of three. “He’s singing ‘The Most Wonderful Time of the Year.’ But then again, when school restarts, it means I have to go back to work as well.”

Maureen Hall, also of West Tisbury and a writer and mother of three, finds it difficult to get work done in the summer, but she likes not having to wake up at 6:00 a.m. “And when school’s out,” she adds, “we get to do more things together – go to the movies, the beach, or the library . . . all those things you pictured doing when you pictured having kids; you’re not just carpooling them around all the time.”

A friend from New York visited recently with her two sons, ages sixteen and eighteen. She said that her family has always packed summers with camping, hiking, biking, and visiting friends like us. She claims never to have looked forward to the reopening of school in the fall. This fall, her oldest son isn’t just going back to school – he’s going to college in another state. And who knows where he’ll be next summer? “I feel,” she said in a voice already thick with nostalgia, “like this is our last realmsummer.”