Every year at about this time, I notice that our entire family starts struggling with motivation and stamina. I have always blamed it on the end of a long school year, and the need for a nice, long break. I blindly assumed that everyone just needed summer, that delightful season of sleeping in, swimming at the neighborhood pool, playing in the sun, and hanging with friends. Three whole months for everyone to fill their collective culture tanks with trips to local museums, art fairs, and historical landmarks. And the perfect opportunity to dust off the board games, shut off technology, and reconnect with each other. Boy, was I wrong.

I now see that it isn’t really the lack of schedule or family bonding time during the summer months we are all craving (that bubble bursts approximately 8.4 seconds after we drive away from the building on the last day of school and the first squabble breaks out between my two sons), no, we just all want to be done with the month of May.

Between soccer practices, soccer games, school projects, school plays, end-of-the-year parties, Mother’s Day, two Hnath birthdays, Memorial Day, recitals, field days, teacher’s gifts, working at a school, etc., I can barely keep track of what kid needs to be at what event with what uniform. Throw a little chemo brain into the mix and you’ve got one hot, soupy, messy May-hem. Had I not remembered to check the backpack of my first-grader for something completely unrelated, my sweet little “Be Bop With Aesop” frog would have had to go on stage as a soccer goalie. I’m just ready for it to end.

I love to wrap everything up with a bow, in fact I’m all about it, but is there any way we could at least have the end-of-the-year celebration in, hmm, let’s see, early February? Oh wait, never mind, that’s basketball playoffs.

It’s easy for me to be dis-May-ed by this month, but you know what? About the second week of July I will be craving the schedule and routine (not to mention a house to myself for 15 minutes), that comes along with the school day. I have heard from other mothers that they LOVE! summer. That they CAN’T WAIT! for the school year to end and HATE! for it to begin again. I tend to put these mythical moms in the same category as those who LOVED! pregnancy, or whose kids NEVER! fight, or who CAN! bake. Amazing. Inspirational. Unobtainable.

The kids and I will do our best to entertain ourselves this summer. There will be some fun; there will be some fights. Humor abounds at Camp Hnath so often the roughest patches lead to family lore and giggles for years to come. And hey, at least I know what I look like bald, so if I end up tearing all of my hair out, no biggie. But please, oh please, may I just make it through May?