It has started to feel cold in the mornings now. Yesterday I noticed that summer had just up and left, all at once. I have that achy, slightly fluttery, heartbroken feeling. I miss it already—the bathing suits hung on the backs of doorknobs, the open doors early in the mornings to let the heat out, the hot, afternoon dullness when we’d escape to the nearest beach for a quick swim. I even miss the sand on the floors.

Also, school starts this week, which always feels so final. But truth be told, the bittersweet feeling there leans more toward the sweet. I am tired of doing so much event organizing—or should I say “not event organizing”, because although I have carried the weight of my 6-year-old’s boredom around on my shoulders for most of the summer, I rarely succeeded in doing much about it.

If she’d had it her way, we would’ve had play dates all day, every day, with little time for much else. Life would be party central around here if she was in charge. She’s always asking me if we can have this or that party:

“Mama, can we have a banana theme party where we make everything out of bananas?”

“But you don’t even like bananas” I answer.

“I would if they were mixed in with other food—like banana cake, banana milkshake, stir fried bananas.” she lists, and for a split second, it brings to mind Bubba in Forest Gump: “Shrimp Creole, shrimp gumbo, pineapple shrimp, coconut shrimp…”

“That sounds like an awful lot of bananas.” I say. But what I’m actually thinking is: That sounds like an awful lot of work. I imagine myself as one of those “good”, energetic moms—like the woman I saw at the beach this summer who, for hours on end was scooping up sand, singing Raffy tunes, hooting and hollering about something or other, and organizing games with all the 3-6 year olds that seemed to gravitate around her. She would do the banana theme party, I know she would. She would also let her kids help her make everything—she wouldn’t care about all the flour spilling across the floor and countertops, or the banana peels that mysteriously found their way to hanging across the arms of the couch.

When I bake with my kids, I always—every single time—reach a point where I want to scream like Lola in Run Lola Run, where she breaks all the windows. That mother at the beach would never want to scream like that. She would probably sing some version of “Peanut, Peanut butter, Jelly”; only she would find some witty way to substitute bananas instead.

Anyways. I didn’t for a second consider doing the banana theme party, and needless to say, it hasn’t been party central around here, and that’s how I like it—usually—but with little kids, I keep learning that good ol’ stay-at-home days don’t often pan out. I wish for them desperately—for long, slow days where we just take things as they come, maybe wander out for a coffee, then home again to read a book for, oh, I don’t know, 8 hours, under a tree. But the girls are not really into this. They have energy to burn.

So there’s this pressure to plan activities, but then on the flip-side, me pining for slow at-home days like I used to have often, before kids, resulting in me sabotaging my good planning intentions, resulting in too many frustrating, unstructured days when we all go a little nuts. Why don’t I just recognize this and get my act together?

Well, for one, I don’t want to be one of those families who can barely stand to be with themselves and each other because they’re so addicted to frantic activity. Like the guy my husband and I saw last week on our way down to Penticton—we were just in time for an hour-long highway closure, and the guy behind us went berserk—I actually thought he might punch the poor lady in the hardhat—and it was clear that the idea of just sitting still for one hour was too much for him. He proceeded to blare techno music from his truck stereo and then he went over to the side of the road—which looked onto sparkling Lake Okanagan, blue mountains and a beautiful dappled summer sky—where he chain smoked and fidgeted until the hour was up. We headed over to the ice cream/fruit stand, and agreed that there were worse things to be doing on a Tuesday afternoon than walking down a road in the sunshine to get ice cream.

So I don’t want to nurture that very thing in my kids. I want to be able to hang around the house a little while my girls make up plays like the sisters in Little Women. I want them to wander off and play like the pastel-painted children in Child’s Garden of Verses where you wonder where on earth the parents are. I’m told that one of these days, I’ll get my wish. I’m told that one of these days, they’ll actually want to take it slow too, instead of needing to go climb metal bars or hunt down all the neighbourhood cats.

But in the meantime, I’m sort of counting on school being back in to help take the edge off.