How will we survive the summer?

One of the nice things about spring break is that your children are home for a whole week.

One of the things that strikes terror in the hearts of parents is that their children are home for a whole week during spring break.

It’s times like this that I advocate for year-round school. Six days a week. 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Twelve months a year. Maybe an extra day off at Christmas, and maybe an occasional Saturday.

I’m joking, of course. I love spending quality time with my children. They’re fun, inquisitive, well behaved (for the most part) and cheerful. At least, that’s what their friends’ parents tell me when my kids have spent any time at their houses. I learned a long time ago not to act surprised when those parents compliment my children’s behavior. I just nod and say, “Yes, Tara has done a good job raising them.”

Nearly all the households I know have two working parents. With children, school breaks become difficult to juggle — does one parent take a sick day? Vacation time? Many workers don’t get paid time off from work — how do those families make ends meet when one of them has to cut back on hours to take care of their school-age kids?

It strikes me that those people have it toughest: jobs with benefits such as sick pay and vacation days are typically better-paying than part-time jobs at, say, the local pizza joint. In my experience, it’s rare to have workers at Eskomo Pies who also have children, but it has happened. I try to accommodate their schedules, but it is not easy.

In my case, I combined several strategies this spring break: I did some work from home; I brought my kids to the office; and they even spent a little time at the Pine Knot News, cutting old newsprint, and drawing (don’t tell Ivan, Rose, Jana, and Deb that they unwittingly turned themselves into daycare providers — they didn’t even seem to notice).

But having the kids was distracting, so most of the important work I did after dark, when the kids went to sleep.

With the snow melting rapidly, the kids spent a good amount of time outside — the boys got their bikes out of storage, and Ellie rode her glider up and down the sidewalk, trying to keep up with them. My neighbor, Brian, took all the neighborhood kids to the trampoline park one afternoon, which means he’s a candidate for sainthood.

But it got me thinking about this summer. My boys are too old for the school daycare programs, and too young for part-time jobs. (While they do help out at the pizza place, I consider it like an internship: it’s more work for me now, but I hope it pays off later). I know many older kids get hired to nanny younger kids, but that seems pretty expensive for the average family.

I spent a little time fantasizing about giving up my law practice for the summer. I would be around for the kids to get them to and from the library, help coach soccer and lacrosse, supervise them at the Pinehurst Park beach. I could spend a little more time at the newspaper, maybe, and at the pizza place.

But reality set in: my clients’ legal needs don’t take a summer vacation, and can’t wait for me to return from a sabbatical. Besides, I don’t have the patience to referee squabbles and settle disputes among my children, who aren’t paying me to do so.

So, I don’t know what I’ll do.

But summer is months away. For now, it seems the whole neighborhood is playing in our basement, and my kids are at someone else’s house altogether. Everyone knows we keep Cheez-Its and tangerines in full view; children have been in and out of the kitchen all day and our stockpile is nearly gone. It’s loud. It’s busy. It’s chaos.

But all will settle down next week, I tell myself, and I’ll probably miss it. Until summer.

Pete Radosevich is the publisher of the Pine Knot News community newspaper and an attorney in Esko who hosts the talk show Harry’s Gang on CAT-7. He can be reached at [email protected].