Summertime (again, again)

May is Mental Health Awareness Month. This is a re-rerun of my first post on Substack, chronicling one summer's deep plunge into our family's various diagnoses.

A now-ancient picture of my two youngest, drinking from the sprinkler. Poem first posted here, and then here.

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 "hot," 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 each syllable.
We’re having a three meals and three snacks summer,
a counting calories summer 
(not counting 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 shark-bite summer, a leash-on 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 consulting doctors via Zoom.
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 fractured 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.
A summer that is just a summer, just us.