Parents for Educating Texas

Camp Korbey, Week 4: Ciao for now

Last week, after the pool collapsed for the second time, sending that 2,000 gallons of water gushing over our backyard again, turning over every potted plant and trash can tsunami-style again, dousing and killing the grass with more chlorine than is probably healthy again, I decided to throw in the towel and call Camp Korbey a wash (pun intended). Our backyard was too uneven to hold up a pool that large (should I bother dedicating a separate post to "creative people and creating level ground"?). As I dried and folded up the sagging sides of the plastic pool, the boys wept in protest, then quickly discovered streaming Netflix.

Two days after the last collapse, I went down to the couch where they were watching "A Wrinkle in Time." I looked at them, slouched down in the cushions, and I felt horrible. I had promised them a summer of guilt-free swimming, a summer of careless learning-less fun. And now their swimming fun had merely followed the route of Spanish lessons and the art-house film and collapsed. I felt like all of Camp Korbey had collapsed right on my head. They will remember it all their lives as the summer that turned out to be a big nothing: no learning, no cool water on a hot day, a total bust. I was disappointed for them, but not nearly as dissapointed as I was in myself. 

I approached them slowly; they didn't move from the couch. I used my quiet voice.

"Hey, guys, how's it going? Do you miss the pool?"

My oldest son H. grunted but didn't take his eyes off the TV. "Huh?" 

I spoke a little louder. I patted them on their thin shoulders. "I said, I know how much you miss the pool. Do you want to talk about it?"

Middle son Z. said, "Shh, Mommy. I can't hear the movie." 

"Hey Mom?"

"What."

"When does basketball camp start?" Pause. "And can you bring me some apple juice? With a straw?"

I think it was at this moment that I decided it was time for a break.

I'm taking a break. I think that the pool - that cheap rubber bellweather now crumpled up in the far corner of the backyard - is trying to tell me something. From here at my computer it sounds like a watery whisper: "Girl, I'm just a pool. I'm prone to collapse, and so are you. You need to take a break." The pool is right, she's absolutely right. 

Taking a break, for most of us, is harder than it first appears. It involves complicated emotions, like admitting we took on too much, or admitting we don't want something we at first thought we wanted. Why do these admissions sting so much? I wonder if it's my own schooling that nags in the dark corners of my heart, the nag that tells me I'm not allowed to slack off or make a mistake - ever. I'm not allowed to just lay around, no homework on the docket, and stare at the sky for a while. As a busy woman who sometimes feels as if she's driving a bus with no brakes through life, taking a break just doesn't feel like a justifiable option.

And yet it does. Have you read these studies on how turning your brain off periodically actually does wonders for you - health-wise, productivity-wise, human-wise? You say you haven't? Then click on the link. I think there are more than a few of you out there who might consider taking life advice from a saggy above-ground pool: you are prone to collapse, so take a break.

I will be offline for the next few weeks while I actively do not check the internet, do not tweet the latest education headlines, and do not post on this blog. I will be vacationing with my family without my computer, which these days is the same as jumping off a tall cliff tethered to nothing but your own heart. I look forward to the long air in between the jump and the hit-the-ground-running, time with my family and time alone to stare off into space.

I hope you get some time off this summer, too, and hope you love yourself enough to enjoy it. 

Remember to listen to the pool: Girl, you know you need it. Take a break. 

I'll be back in August. Ciao for now. 

Camp Korbey, Week 2: Lessons from the pool

Or, let go and let chlorine.

Ah, The Summer of Learning and Fun. Or was it Fun and Learning? It's hard to remember, I've got so much water in my ears. I've set all our summer learning lessons on fire, so to speak, in the Texas heat, in favor of a lighter touch. Admittedly, it's not easy for me to do, but my head is clearer now - and I have nothing but the pool to thank. 

The pool: a blow-up contraption measuring fifteen feet in diamter, not adjusting for a slight lean to the left, and a solid thirty-one inches deep. The five of us stand at the sliding glass door in the clear light of morning, watching the water ripple into the blow-up lip of the pool, our mouths watering at the thought of 2 o'clock that afternoon, when the heat becomes obtuse - 100, 101 - and we can climb in for relief. The cheap plastic ladder over the top can prove awkward, especially for grown-up legs, but then the feel of the water is, well, awesome.

"That pool's tiny," noticed a seven-year-old neighbor. "My pool at the country club's bigger." He's absolutely right, I suppose, his pool is an Olympic-size with a diving board and a 35-ft. water slide. Ours is only a backyard pool, and it comes with backyard pleasures - handstands and squirtgun fights and splash contests. Every evening at dusk I cannot help but think that it must have been the charm of the backyard pool that got the boys to stop fighting. Maybe because they're too tired to fight? We pour them into bed at night, tanned gangly arms and legs sticking out of their summer pajamas.

What occupies most of my sons' pool time is a game called Watch This! For the uninitiated, here is how you play: think up the craziest thing you know how to do and do it. For instance, fill your mouth with pool water, swish it around throughly, then dive underwater with your mouth still full and see how long you can stand to stay under. Or, take both hands and throw as much water as you can out of the pool with one sweep of your arms. Or, see how many squirts you can get out of your squirt gun. Or, pretend you are a dolphin and see how many dolphin runs you can make in one lap around the pool. At the beginning of each feat, the contestant is required to yell, Watch This! As in, I can pee on that tree from way back here - Watch This!

We are not learning Spanish, or creating art-house films, or playing Scrabble, but I still wanted to have fun with my sons this summer, and this week I realized that, to win their hearts, I will have to play their game. Now, I am not your typical Watch This! player; my siblings can probably attest that I've never played even one game of Watch This! in my life (with maybe one exception - Who can have glasses, braces and a perm, lose the class president race and get turned down for the Santa Switch Dance? Watch This!). Instead, my summers growing up were filled with reading Important Books, the names of which I hung on the fridge.

My Summer Reading List, 1983 - MUST BE READ BEFORE SCHOOL STARTS

Great Expectations
A Tale of Two Cities
War and Peace
Gone With the Wind
Wuthering Heights
Jane Eyre
Pride and Prejudice
Sense and Sensibility
Rebecca
My Cousin Rachel

"Come outside and play!" my sister begged, but I sat on my bed with a dictionary by my side and plowed through each book in order. At ten, I wasn't really able to understand a lot of what I read (I mean, War and Peace?) but enjoyed the dance of words in my head, words that sounded important and smart. I liked being introspective while our busy household raged in other rooms. After I finished the last page of a book, I'd run to the refrigerator and cross it off with a pen. Done and done: a summer vacation of lists.

"Hey Z. watch this!" shouts H. He dives under the water, kicking his legs hard, flinging water everywhere. He holds his breath a few seconds, then lifts his head. "How far did I go?" Z. cocks his head to one side and holds out his hands a few feet apart, and H. dives back into the water to try again. I step outside, into the blazing hot sun, and hold my breath.

"Boys, can I play?" My voice went up two octaves, into "fake jaunty" register. I had put on my swimsuit and a cotton coverup. 

"Are you going to wear that dress in the pool?" Z. asks. 

"No, it's a coverup." 

"Oh." I take off the coverup and climb over the ladder. The water is freezing - how can this be? It must be 100 degrees outside. As I ease my tense body into the water, the boys stand up stiffly and can't stop giggling, then they start splashing me. 

"Boys, don't - DON'T! It's too cold." They stop in their tracks and stare at me like a stranger. I see it on their faces like a warning: mom in the pool. They immediately head for the ladder and get out. 

"What are you doing? You've been begging me to get in with you and play!" My voice sounds tinny and thin, why are they getting out of the pool? 

"Um, we're cold, we'll just sit over here and warm up for a while." They wrap themselves in towels and sit down on the concrete facing me, nervously watching me dip myself lower and lower into the freezing cold water. I  float left, and so do their eyes - I now know how the hippopotamus feels at the zoo. I gather my nerve. I suddenly kind of wish I wasn't playing a one-person game of Watch This! I kind of wish I was inside, reading The New Yorker, but whatever; I'm here, I'm wet, and I want them to think that I can be carefree and adventurous. Or I think that's what I want them to think. 

"All right, guys, can you do a handstand in the pool?" I decide against waiting for an answer. I stand up and push my face into the water, flipping my 38-year-old body all the way over until the top of my head rests firmly on the bottom. The water is more shallow than I anticipated. With all my strength, I pull my legs up out of the water and attempt to bring them together in the air in some sort of formation of a handstand. But my legs have decided that's enough and fall right over, causing my back muscles to contract. I have a picture in my head of what the perfect pool handstand must look like, but am thinking that maybe I need one more try to get it just right. I let go of some air and my head gently floats to the top. When I open my eyes, the two oldest boys are staring at me in silence.

"Was that supposed to be a handstand?" says H. "If it was," his mouth spreads into a smile, "you didn't quite make it." Z. giggles. 

"Yeah, Mommy, your legs barely even got out of the pool!" They are laughing hard. "Let's see another handstand! Let's see another one!" They are shouting now, and clapping. Both boys stand up on the concrete, their wet towels falling around their ankles. 

"Really? You want to see another one?" I clasp my hands together in preparation to dive or pray. "OK. Watch This!"

 

Camp Korbey, Week 1: Mom, he's looking at me

 

On the first day of summer vacation, I already knew what I was in for, and it looked something like this: the four of us, my three sons and I, are on our way to a store, to collect supplies for Camp Korbey, The Summer of Learning and Fun, as I've come to call it, albeit somewhat ironically. We are in the minivan, listening to soft adult alt-rock, and the two oldest children, H. and Z., are in the way back, sitting next to one another. They have been fighting since 5:50 this morning, when out of the predawn darkness we heard a gutteral, primal scream that sounded an awful lot like, "He took my Pokémon card! I didn't want to trade! I didn't want to traaaaaade!" And now, they are still fighting, picking at one another, trying with an admirable amount of energy to get under one another's skin.

I suddenly realize we could be spending the next three months in the vast, uncharted lands of a sparsely populated land - Greenland, let's say - with thousands of blank and limitless acres all to ourselves, and yet one child would still be unhappy that the other is sitting too close to him. Touching him when he didn't want to be touched. Looking at him when he didn't want to be looked at. But we don't have Greenland and its thousands of acres. We only have the minivan.

"Mooooooom, he's looking at me." To which I reply, 

"Stop looking at him." To which another son replies, 

"I'm not looking at him. I never even was."

This is my own fault. I am not a huge fan of running from summer camp to summer camp, especially with my youngest, ten-month-old son, A., in tow. I am one of those touchy-feely parents who read "The Wilderness of Childhood" one too many times and wants desperately for my children to stay home, enjoy and learn from an extended period of down time we now call unstructured play. Unstructured play is actually what my brothers and sister and I called summer vacation growing up - a time to do whatever the heck you wanted all day, every day. And I want that for my kids, at least the older two, with one caveat: I want to sneak in some learning when they're not looking. I have made a list of potential activities I think they might be interested in - 

• For H., who is seven, start a blog.
• For both, make a short movie - with a script authored by them, a set, and costumes. 
• Learn Spanish.
• Read lots of books.
• Make room for a couple of summer camps - swimming lessons, basketball camp, etc.

"Who wants to go get some crayons and storyboard a script for the movie?" I yell to the back of the van. 

"I don't want to make a movie. I'm hungry," says one. 

"I don't want to make a movie, I'm hungry," says the other.

"He's repeating! Mom, make him stop repeating me!"

"But don't you want to learn Spanish?" I scream. "¿No quiere aprender Español?"

"NO!" They yell back in unison. H. shifts in his seat. "Mom, I don't want to learn Spanish. I just want to go swimming." 

Right. This is going to be a bit tougher than I thought.

I once had a dream. A dream where my children and I sat around reading poetry and playing Scrabble. There would be baby bruschettas and Pelligrino in cups with straws. In my dream, my sons would love The Buena Vista Social Club and want to play Cubano instruments. We'd make a movie - a film, really - about swarthy pirates, or Greek myths, or a combo of the two. I now realize I might have to abandon the dream - and all the fun supplies we were going to go get to accompany said dream - in favor of taking care of my actual children, the ones who would rather fight about who gets the blue car seat than make a film. Well, I should try not to be so negative - the ones who would rather, er, swim. It is summer after all. 

Whose summer of learning is this, anyway? 

We turn the car around, abandoning our mission for clever craft supplies and notecards. I reach for my phone and speed-dial my husband. He picks up right away. "What's up?"

"Get your shoes on. We're getting a pool."