Summertime (again)

This is a revision of my first-ever post on Substack (sniff! Memories!). As it's Mental Health Awareness Month for another week, it feels like a good time to share this poem again.

Original post is here. Painting by one of my wonderful daughters.

It’s late August, a month from fall
and someone on TikTok is talking again
about having a "hot girl summer" 
a phrase I despise for so many reasons.
First, that women are reduced (once more)
to only being worth the sum of their parts
and hotness, as we know, means skinny and young.

At my house, we’re having an ADHD summer.
An eating disorder summer, an OCD summer
with my middle son counting all syllables.
We’re having a three meals and three snacks summer
a counting calories summer, though not to be thin
but instead to stay alive. We’re having a sad girl summer.

We’re having a puppy summer, not just the fur and the fun
but the shit and the pee and mysterious vomit.
We’re having a painful summer, a training summer
a summer of keeping him from leaping on the table.
He crawls behind the garbage bins when he steals a sock.
(He’s having a great summer, if you ask him.)

We’re having a therapy summer, a telehealth summer
a summer of sitting in front of screens, conferring.
We’re having a “thankful for insurance” summer
a “Dad needs to work” summer
a “Mom needs a break” summer
a summer of laying down our hopes 
and picking up the pieces.
We’re having a broken summer.

We’re having a summer of starting over
of figuring out, once again, what it means to parent
and our kids figuring out what it means to be them.
Not hot, though they are so beautiful 
but what it means to have a different brain
a different body, a self worth fighting for no matter what
and a summer that is just a summer, just us.