The Bridge

Earlier today I was sitting out on our back porch playing the card game "Garbage" (which is more fun than the title might imply) with my two sons- it was about 85 degrees, and the humidity was absolutely stunning. But the porch was ok, because a breeze kept the sweat drying at a nice pace. We had spent the day lolling around the house, the kids playing with the legos, then reading, then playing with legos, while I got us packed up for our impending camping trip to the North Shore. Anyway, while we were playing Garbage, something about shuffling those limp cards, making them rifle through the 'bridge' as best I could given the sogginess factor, triggered a sudden flashback to summer days of my youth.
Back when I was in elementary school we were kept fairly busy in the summer months with daycamp and softball leagues (I was on the first all-girls team our town had ever organized- go Title 9!) and other activities, but we had a heck of a lot of time to fill ourselves. And fill it we did with super brain-enriching activities- like collecting cans from area garbage bins to bring in for a refund, or to save for a brother's beer can collection, or going door-to-door to ask people for their 'jokers' from decks of cards to add to our card collections. And learning how to do 'the bridge' while shuffling a deck of cards. I distinctly remember sitting in Carol Zimmer's dark living room, fans pushing the wet air around, hair sticking to my neck, as I struggled to learn the bridge. I'm talking about that fancy shuffling maneuver when you arch the two sides and they all surprisingly and satisifactorily slide back into one deck. I know that in one sitting I tried it enough times to make my hands ache. And by the end of the afternoon I had it at a rudimentary level. But many following summer afternoons were spent perfecting it. Now, at 38, I'm pretty damn good.
But anyway, sitting there thinking about those lazy afternoons at the Zimmer's house, I cast an eye over my sons' summer schedules. I purposely tried to lay off signing up for too much this summer, but somehow our calendar has filled up. But I am going to stop right now. No more activities! The remaining free days of summer we are going to take as they come. I am going to relax and let the day happen. I think many kids in this generation need a lot of practice in how to fill 'spare time'. My boys delight in going from legos, to their bikes, back to legos, over to do some drawing, and then back to legos...but most often they hardly make it into the second lego session before I am shepherding them out the door to some activity. Who knows, if I really do successfully step off the activity superhighway, maybe my boys will master the bridge. It could happen.