The Broad Appeal: Back to school? A loony tune for me

August 5, 2009 by Lani Voivod, Chief Scribbler.

I see the sales for school supplies – binders, pens, backpacks and ultra-mega-dyna-gigabyted laptops that become obsolete five minutes after you plug ‘em in. I walk the aisles of Kohl’s, Target and Old Navy, and notice the buzz of smart, crisp, back-to-school fashions, all screaming for my attention.

I listen to other New Hampshire moms chirping around me – slices of conversations involving teachers, schedules, plans and grindstones. (These gals are BUSY, let me tell you!)

I’m aware the first day of school is just a hopscotch-and-a-skip away.

I simply don’t care.

It’s summer in New Hampshire, darnit. S-U-M-M-E-R: The fleeting blip of sparkling bliss that embeds itself into our DNA and serves as the wistful memories of days gone by for the rest of our livelong days.

Our snowblowers are somewhere gathering dust. Our muck boots? Tossed aside, crusty with April’s sludge. Sure, we’ve weathered a few thunderstorms and cloudy days this summer. But the overall joie de vivre of Granite State sunshine and smiles will not be stripped away from me prematurely in favor of booking hair cuts for my kids, filling out pesky school-district forms and giving our alarm clock permission to torture us at dawn’s early light.

I won’t do it, I won’t do it, I WON’T DO IT!

Not because I’m a bad mother (I scored 73 percent on the official Mom Exam, which is, after all, a passing grade!), but because I still have nearly a dozen things to do on our family’s “Summer FUN To-Do List.”

Things like the Weirs Beach Drive-in, Jellystone Park, Flume Gorge, Lost River and Polar Caves. I want to go to York’s Wild Animal Kingdom in Maine, and scoot down to Cape Cod to show my boys where mommy spent chunks of her summer vacation at their ages.

Then I have to get to Hampton and spend that 37 minutes I do every year inching into the frigid water, until my nipples are so cold and stiff I swear they could break off.

I’ve got all these fabulous things yet to do before September, and these stores and calendars and responsible people around me have the nerve to insist I own up to my maternal responsibilities and get my butt in gear for a new school year?

Nuh-uh. I don’t think so, Sister Sledge.

I’m going to do what I’ve done for the past two years, since my oldest was beholden to the Gilford school system.
I’m going to suck the marrow out of this summer to the greatest extent possible. Hubby and I already put the down payment on our annual trip to Maine’s Camp Kokatosi, where four of my cousins and their 11 kids play and frolic, all of us making fresh DNA-embedded memories.

We camp on a lake where I first heard loons holler out during the wee hours of the morning, just a few short years ago, and we tumble back home a mere 13 hours before school begins anew, hoping there’s enough left in the cooler for our son’s back-to-school lunch box.

Incidentally, those loons make an unforgettable sound, if you’ve never experienced it. Way, way better than the sinister wail of that cruel, wretched alarm clock.

Care to chime in? E-mail Lani@TheBroadAppeal.com.

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