Respect Your Rhythms in the Seasons of Mothering

Mothering, like much else that happens in a year, can have seasons. Seasonal mothering time can also mean you get to take for yourself perhaps? I spent years strategically planning out summer camps and vacations. When I was trapped inside with littles, August was always a wasteland of too much time inside. I’d take them to Home Depot just to have them sprint down the aisles or roll them back in a mop bucket.
Now, as a mother of a 20-year-old boy and a 12-year-old (and what feels like 20 more) girl, I am immensely grateful to not have to worry about that much summer calendar traffic. And slowing the feck down is one lesson I intentionally recreate. But one lesson I have yet to proactively grasp is respecting the rhythms of the year, especially in anticipating the lull of Augusts.
Like the many woo-woo whispers of the internet, I was thinking those chicks spouting rhythmic living were overthinking it. But after reading through some of my past journals, I seem to have unwittingly created habit of digging in during the downtime of this stupidly hot and hellishly humid part of the year called August in Maryland. What if I get to look forward to this?

My Summertime preach/bitch is that the only people who say they love Summer are thems with privileges. A little inner-city honesty? What makes summers fun are pools and houses near bodies of water. As kids, the rest of us poor slobs are all camping inside our houses. Your Italian grandmother would have suggested we “stay inside where it’s cool” while she fed us meatballs and coca-colas down in the basement kitchen of a Baltimore rowhouse. Until someone opened up the fire hydrant on the corner.
These past few Summers have seen my children less and less motivated for many things I would have planned. I am good with them planning their time according to their own interests and friends. My future August’s memories will have me lazily lying in bed in the mornings with my fur babies under my hands. Long languorous moments drinking coffee and journaling quietly. Unproductivity at its best.

The world would have us believe being productive is arguably more important than, well, anything. Progress! I say hanging around in homeostasis is just as productive. My nervous system is smooth and languid in this place. No auto-immune diseases popping up in my cortisol flooded body this month! Our family is learning how to be in the season in a way that works for us all. I’m Okay with mothering hard through school and holiday seasons if I can end up sleeping in a couple of times a year.
Making room for my life, time, and space too.