Summertime Parenting

If there is anything harder than having a house full of teenagers, it has got to be having them part-time. It is hard enough being a part-time parent. Contrary to what my girls believe, I don't sit around the house just waiting for their visits. I have worked hard to fill the void that not having them around causes. Maybe too hard because my already full life bulges and threatens to break at the seams when it crashes into the full time parenting of summer.

And having my girls for a couple of weekends a month doesn't help much. I can devote most of my time to them during those weekends. This spoils all of us because we can't follow that pattern in the summer or nothing would get done.

So each summer finds us readjusting to living with each other full time. It's hectic and tumultuous at first. Their father's home and mine have very different operating principles. Habits formed there must be left there. I don't accept them here. My ordinarily quiet alone days are now full of noise, activity, TV shows and arguments.

One daughter was trying to convince me that I knew a lot of songs from this one singer. I didn't recognize his name and I only knew one of his songs. When I mentioned that I don't listen to the radio much she balked. “Mom, you have it on in the car everyday.” I replied that I was only in the car everyday to take her to cheer practice. She just couldn't believe it when I said that many weeks I only go to the grocery store and to church. Both five minutes away in my small town.

But we do adjust. We begin to relax and open up to each other. I have a chance to get to know my daughters in a way that four days a month don't allow. The days smooth into a daily rhythm and all is sweet for a few short weeks.

Each year finds us scrambling to get them ready for Girl's Camp, something that is done on my time and with my church. It's important and faith building. I wouldn't have them miss it for the world but it does take a big chunk of my precious time. This year, they will go to camp and then back to their father's the next day. I dropped them off yesterday morning and came home to my quiet, orderly home, devastated once again at having to say good bye so soon. It never seems long enough.

It is impossible to measure the wear and tear that my mother's heart goes through with all of these arrangements. I can so understand the parents that stay away from their children. In the short run it saves the anguish of the never ending good byes that feel like losing them all over again.

But in the long run, it hurts the children so much more to not have involvement with both of their parents. And I am holding out for the long run. As a matter of fact, the long run is what keeps me hanging in there day after day, heart break after heart break. I want what will be best for my children here on earth and in the eternities. Life is not a sprint, it is an endurance race.

So I will go to my bed and sob my pain out. I will beg the heavens to give me the strength I need. I will beg that same strength for all my children. I will work hard to put the pieces of my fragmented life together and trust that someday it will be a beautiful picture with all the pieces of the puzzle complete. In the meantime, I better find some tissues. That's the view from my side of the street, what's yours?