Small blunders: Thank god it's not summer

Summer vacations: two words that sum up all that is right and good about childhood. Also, two words that most parents have mixed emotions about. Of course we love having our kids around longer; of course we love not having to keep up with the projects and the tiffins; and we love waking up late... But, er, to have to engage them all day (especially the singletons)? To have to find ways around the ‘I’m bo-o-o-o-red’ chorus? Mixed feelings, I tell you!

When we were kids, and our parents weren’t trying to blight every minute of our lives with productivity, summers meant boredom and a delightful sense of ‘wasted’ time. Now, because we’re all into not wasting our children’s time, vacations entail a certain amount of stress. Stress that is really a product of both how we live and who we are as people.

For us, as children, summer vacations meant going out at odd times, like 2pm, under a baking sun. It meant carrying our loaded lunch plates to the friend-next-door’s house and eating together. It meant trapping flies under rice sieves, and thinking up daft schemes to make money – like a talent show or a library. It meant walking to the ‘pepsi-cola’ shop, where, for 50 paise, we bought a plastic tube of frozen, flavoured water. It meant ten long minutes of cheap, cold bliss. 

I guess the key difference between then and now is that our neighbourhoods felt different then. With more kids, lesser traffic and fewer human predators around (or so our parents thought), we could be left to our own devices. Today, even if we did live in a building full of kids (we don’t), I doubt my kid would be walking into people’s houses like we used to – or for that matter, strolling around with her pals, scoring sugared drinks. Unfortunately, in these paranoid times, we cast a protective net around our children. And safety nets, typically, tend to trap memories and dreams.

Despite being a lifelong advocate of boredom as a source of creativity, I had solid plans this summer. While kid slept in, I’d work from 6 am till 10 am. Then we’d read, bake, go out, do potlucks or art projects. The afternoons would be hers to be bored in. At the end of 45 days, we’d be relaxed, and my book would be ready for my publisher.

What is it they say about the best-laid schemes of mice and mums? That they ‘gang aft agley’? Or often go kaput? A bout of throat infection and then viral fever blighted the first fortnight. Work was tossed aside and the recuperating child was monitored, fed, talked to and checked on. By the time we were done with it all, you couldn’t tell me apart from a frequently used kitchen-rag. As for work? Ah, I waved that bus good-bye when the help quit some time during the viral fever phase.

So when a friend suggested we car pool and send a bunch of kids together for three workshops, I hesitated – just for a bit. As a family, we dislike too many structured activities. But then again, at 8.5 years, and with a bunch of friends to travel and hang out with, it also meant that she’d get the chance to make some summer memories of her own. And I could catch up with work! Travelling across town with tiffin boxes and friends, hers wouldn’t be the cheap, unstructured memories of our childhood, but they’d be memories all the same.

So kid took shots at acting, forensics and mask-making, and for the rest of the holidays, she loafed around at home, reading, doing origami and chatting incessantly. As for my book? It never got done – because when my kid left home, I plopped down in a heap of exhausted inertia. Never mind, I tell myself; it wouldn’t have worked out the way I’d imagined it, anyway. Nothing ever does!