Hot Empty Nest Summer

Or, how I learned to love summer again

It happened before and it will happen again.

Summer along the Great Lakes is way too short. We know how hard winters are and how long it takes for Spring to finally arrive. When summer finally kicks in, people go nuts. They drive to Indiana for fireworks, haunt the farmer’s market for corn even though the crop doesn’t come in until August, and book a week at the lake. They print out the schedule of free concerts downtown, organize cookouts every weekend, and set up a kiddie pool in the yard to cool off after work.

Everyone loves summer except for working parents.

For many years, I had an annual I Hate Summer rant on social media. That’s because summer is absolutely not set up for modern family life. There’s an assumption that we all need our kids to help out on the farm, even though only 14% of Americans live in rural areas and a lot of the growing is done on an industrial scale. Literally. The major corn and soybean operations here in Illinois rely on automatic and robotic equipment to do the work in the fields. Even detasseling seed corn, once the stereotypical summer job downstate, is now done mostly by machine.

I hated summer as a parent. Childcare was and is patchy and expensive. I could see how bored my kid was. As a freelancer, I had more flexibility than most parents, but I still had to work. One quirk of freelancing is that summers are often busy because companies need to cover staff vacations.

My best trick was finding European sources for stories so that I could get up at 4:00 am and get to work before dealing with my family. As a bonus, my clients loved that I brought an international perspective into my stories.

But I hated summer. Now, I talk to my friends and relatives who have school-age children, and they are scrambling in the same way that I did. I remain shocked that our society refuses to address summer break in any cohesive way. Kids need safe, stimulating things to do. White-collar employers expect parents to work from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm five days a week. Retail and service industry workers are fortunate if they have a remotely predictable schedule. If our politicians cared as much about family values as they claim, they would tackle this instead of restaurants holding drag queen brunches.

Once my kid left the house, though, I started to like summers again. A few years, I took up sailing. Every Tuesday and Friday evening I’m out on Lake Michigan, working crew and learning so much! I do all the things: the fireworks, the cookouts, the free concerts, the week at Lake Erie.

In summary (Summery?):

·         Politicians continue to talk a good game while ignoring the real needs of children and parents.

·         Illinois has 12.7 million people. About 75,000 of these people work on farms, the majority of whom are adults.

·         It gets better.