The kids, on the verge of launching, remember and continue our family traditions.

Another summer in the bag. Not the season, which has some weeks to run, but the out-of-school event.

For years the body memory of my childhood school rhythms defined the year, though softly. I counted on friends to give things some structure — it’s beach season, or free concert in the park season, or time for a tour of concrete architecture in Boston. Thank god for people planning costume parties, dinners, and theme events! Work kept right on through most of June, July, and August, but I wanted to be sure to get camping a few times before it’s done, do some “summery” things.

Once we had kids the educational calendar tracked and organized the year. The children learned their days, seasons, months, holidays. The semesters, or quarters, or quarters within semesters (which makes no sense, don’t even try to explain this to me) kept us all going. Thanksgiving break, winter break, spring break.

But the big one is summer. So much time without school, so making it mean something was more daunting, and it was up to us. Day camps for sports, crafts, games, skills. Did I really need to sign them up by February? Maybe not, but why take a chance. Also family camp. Family trips. When something worked, it entered the rotation. Because why reinvent the wheel? “Our” hotel near Grandpa Mel in Northridge. “Our” RV in Grandpa Ted and Grandma Mary’s back yard. Heading out for the airport before dawn to catch a direct flight. Some things didn’t work so well; the kids liked camping in a tent just fine, but Jay, not so much. But we got our rhythms going, repeating what worked, adding things when the opportunity presented. Uncles Kenny and Paul are spending part of the summer in the UK? Sounds like a family trip. That kind of thing. It felt like we were barely keeping our heads above water, but we kept paddling, and summer after summer, we made it to fall.

Life kept happening and we adjusted. Grandparents in independent living, with less bandwidth for noise and chaos, so we’d entertain the kids and wait our opportunities. Sometimes it wasn’t so great, but there were peak experiences too. Who knew the Austin Aquarium let you get in the cage with monkeys? Seems like a terrible idea (and not sure what the monkeys thought), but it was the last time I saw a spark of my dad come to the surface. And some of the “filler” became important to the kids. I don’t think they knew the trampoline parks or mall climbing structures were just to do something while waiting to have dinner with an elderly relative, but they liked it. I insisted on the hard stuff too; funerals, to understand how we mourn and celebrate. Bar Mitzvahs, even though the service is long and you have to sit kind of still.

On our visit to Austin this summer, to see their Aunt and Uncle, I was struck with how strongly the kids, even in their terrible teens, wanted to revisit the places that were “ours.” All the grandparents are gone, and they’ve mostly outgrown climbing structures and trampoline parks. But there’s still the BBQ place on the lake where you can feed the turtles. The TexMex spot with the room lined with hubcaps and the giant, scalding hot cheesy food. (Weirdly, we didn’t go to the same location we used to, but nobody noticed. As Austin spreads out megacity style, some of its charming local chains spread with it. Each location of Chuy’s TexMex has basically the same theme “rooms” as the original house where it started. So actually “our” restaurant, by Grandma’s, was in fact a facsimile of the original place I ate as a college kid. Like Dave and Buster’s, each new copy is just as lifelike as the next.)

We climbed Mt Bonnell (3 of us; one teen choose to sit in the car — still teens!). We spent lots of time in the water. We tried a new tradition they’ve seen on TikTok, the southern Waffle House.

So no, it’s not the same place, not without my parents, not without my earlier self. Much of my work is letting go of the kids, giving them space to become their own people (while still feeding them and holding the line). But the fact that our high school senior, on the verge of launching herself into the world, wanted to retrace some of our steps, to own our family traditions, made me feel that over the years we’ve done a thing or two right. I sure hope so.

Happy “fall” everybody! It might not be that season, but the time is here to draw a few orange and red leaves with the crayons and get our butts back into those little plastic chairs.