Are you giving your kids a 90s summer? | Eva Wiseman
Sunday 21st July 2024
Balls, bikes, possibly boredom. As the summer holidays begin, and nostalgia for the good old days kicks in, it’s worth wondering if it really was better back then
As the school holidays begin, parents tend to behave in one of two ways. The first is to pray, not to God or the universe, but to time itself, begging it for some leniency, a bit of give. Please time, this year please stretch and fold around our external pressures and internal needs. You will recognise these parents by their blank white eyes and empty pockets, and skin that ripples then turns grey across the long month of August.
The second type of parent (I say parent, I’m being coy, of course, we’re talking about mothers here) runs at the summer as if she’s in a sanitary-pad commercial or attacking a bear. She has plans, schedules, craft materials, hope. The holidays for her are an opportunity for self-discovery and existential relaxation, for resetting the mind and reclaiming the soul, even during fractured workdays and snippy emails from one’s boss, and meetings held on Zoom in rainy playgrounds, which she assures herself she will one day look back upon and merrily laugh like hahaha.
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