Earlier in the week we were experiencing some hot humid weather here in Ohio.  My one granddaughter age five was spending the day with me so I decided it would be a good day to wash my car and she was excited about the idea of helping me. So while I got the soap and wags out, she waited patiently as I also hooked up the hose.  Her job was to wet down the car, I would soap it up and scrub it and then she would rinse it off.

What happened next was predictable but I was still not prepared.  My advice to anyone who may read this is as follows:  When washing your car, do not stand on the other side of it while a five year old is holding the turned-on hose if you want to remain dry.  She got me good but then she also got herself good when she accidentally turned the hose on herself.  Her laughter was contagious and it brought back some summer memories of summer daze as a young mother.

I remember those long hot days of summer as a mother of six children all home from school, 24 hours a day, seven days a week for twelve straight weeks. Most of my summers were spent in a daze.  It became a survival test of keeping or losing my sanity.  There were days when I completely lost my sanity, never able to find it, or replace it.  It was just gone. None of the children noticed that I lost it and friends and neighbors ignored the fact that I did.  It wasn’t until my children grew older and moved out of the home, that I slowly began to find pieces of my sanity laying around the house and was able to embrace it and in part restore it.

My daughter is slowly entering the summer daze herself.  I recognize the survival test of her sanity.  Earlier this week, I called over to my daughter to see how things are going since she has her three children, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.   The oldest answered the phone and I asked him what he had been doing and he said they were playing in their pool.   I asked, so what is momma doing? He said, “Oh, she’s waiting.”   I asked if I could speak to her and he said, “Sure!”

My daughter comes to the phone and I ask, “So, what are you waiting for?”  She said, “I’m in the kitchen cooking.”   Perhaps that is what she thinks she is doing – but I recognize the daze over the phone.  She is really standing in her kitchen wondering what happened to her sanity, and ‘waiting’ to see if she totally lost it.  Even her son recognized the fact that she wasn’t just cooking but waiting.

In the background I could hear giggles coming from outside her kitchen door, which opens into her backyard.  The pool is one of the large plastic pools in which children splash more out of it then it ever holds.  Along with the pool, my daughter allowed them to play with the hose for a little bit.  Since our weather has been so hot, there has been little rain, so she figured her garden could use the watering as the children played.  Silly mom thinking that would ever happen!

At one point I could hear the children arguing and my daughter calling out that it was the oldest one’s turn.  After answering the phone he had gone back outside.  A few seconds later she called out and yelled, “Stop that!”  I didn’t ask her what was going on, didn’t need to do that because I’ve been there many years before. The dog was barking at the door because she doesn’t like to get wet. So I know exactly what just happened to the dog.

My daughter sighs, “Mother, (I love it when my kids call me mother, because it means this is serious) I laid down the rules and they have broken every one of them.”  Her rules are pretty basic, based on the standard rules I tried to enforce when my kids were young playing in water.  It starts with the children are to take turns squirting each other and only if the other person wants to be squirted.  Well, that lasted a moment.  What fun is there in squirting someone who wants to get wet?  It is more fun to bug the sibling who doesn’t want to get wet.  This is followed by the rule of taking turns with the hose and jumping in the pool.  The art of sharing is an acquired taste – doesn’t come natural and takes a lifetime to learn or accept.  Some people never acquire the taste.   The next rule was not to turn the hose onto the house, especially if the windows and doors are open.  Let’s face it, in a child’s thinking the huge structure with open windows and doors is too tempting not to at least hit it once.

Well, needless to say, since their dog was at the back door barking to come in because a she didn’t like to get wet – guess what area the water was still hitting?  As I stifled my laugh because I knew exactly what was happening, she screamed, ‘No!’ and said, “Mom, I have to get off the phone, the baby is spraying the hose into my kitchen door and my floor is getting wet.”   I said, “Good-bye – have fun!”

When my kids were little, we had the same kind of plastic pools.  Only we had two plastic pools because there were six of them.  My idea of sharing and getting along with each other was that the boys would have their pool and the girls would have their pool. Why should two boys stay in one pool and four girls stay in the other pool?  What was I thinking?  It was another one of those moments when I totally lost my sanity and I would find myself, like my daughter now, ‘waiting’ in the kitchen, thinking I was cooking but in reality hoping to find my sanity again.  I had dictated the same rules as she did and found myself yelling the same commands and letting the dog in, soaked because he hated getting wet.

I think the Summer Daze is a passage of motherhood.  I managed to survive and while I haven’t found all the pieces to my sanity, I’m functional.  I know my daughter is entering the beginning stages but in about 20 years, she’ll be functional again.  The hose squirting thing is hereditary in this family and I should have remembered that when I handed the hose over to the five year old- residual effects of Summer Daze in grandmothers.

My heart is filled with treasured moments to cherish and remember the rest of my life.  That includes – the summer daze of many summers.  Life moves too fast and the children who test your sanity today are the adults who later affirm that it was all worth it.

Copyright 2009 Susan Handle Terbay