Mom on the Run: Where has the summer gone, already?

I sit down at the kitchen table, refrigerator calendar and pen in hand. I've been marking summer activities as they've been booked, and flipping through the June, July, and August pages, it looks like there's writing on every square. Already. Hmm. I'm not sure about scheduling the hoped-for hockey skills camp for my son and a brief family vacation.

I trail my finger down the page—June is already half over, I can disregard top-of-the-month scribblings about graduations and parties, awards ceremonies, and orthodontist appointments.

Moving on: the skills camp is on Wednesday evenings. Well, we've got a pediatrician appointment on the first Wednesday of the camp, have to get those school sports physicals done!, but that's mid-afternoon, my 14-year-old should be free in time. The next Wednesday, July 1, is totally blank; available! Wednesday, July 8 … ooh, that was close, he'll just be back from lacrosse camp, and his day camp ends early enough that day. And the next week, too, his sister is out of town, but … hey, so far, so good, the first four Wednesdays work.

I'm feeling confident about investing the $195 in nine weeks of camp, we've got four Wednesdays already! But now—uh, oh—there are a lot of lines on the calendar, long horizontal lines crossing weeks at a time, lines that mean people are out of town.

And sure enough, that fifth Wednesday, in late July, nope, he can't go that week, both kids will be in West Virginia on our church mission trip. The next Wednesday, and the one after that, my son will be out of town again, on a trip with his dad. So that's three Wednesdays in a row gone. Hmm.

The next week, well, that Wednesday evening is free so far, but it's also two months away. Will there be other camps? Invitations to lake houses? Kings Dominion trips? I know how summer goes, things pop up, spontaneity rules the day, and I hate to book so far in advance. But shoot: of the nine weeks of camp, four are good and three are bad. I don't want to commit already, but without the end of August, we're missing too much camp to justify paying for it.

I sigh, it's a toss-up, and decide to sleep on it. Instead, let's look: when is the whole family free? I mean all of us, mom, dad, daughter, son, is there a long weekend when we can all go somewhere together?

I flip the calendar back to June and start running my finger down Mondays. Son at camp. Daughter at camp. Mission trip. Dad and son trip. Daughter at camp. School sports tryouts, then practices and scrimmages. Plus I know there are things not calendared yet: high school orientation. School schedule pick-up. Dog-sitting for neighbors. Gosh, is there no free weekend at all? All summer?

Shaking my head, I start over, back in June, this time dragging my finger down the Fridays, going slowly, looking at Dad's shift schedule and weighing events; what's necessary, what's tentative? And wait! There is one! One weekend in August, a Friday through Sunday when we're all available.

Sighing, I drop the pen and lean back in my chair. It's happened again! We're running out of summers, the kids are getting older, we keep saying we're going to make family time a priority, but … but here I am, in mid-June, and the calendar is already full, everyone going every which-way. It's depressing, to sit and look at it on paper, to realize the summer's going to be as crazy as the school year, just with extra driving and laundry.

Then I sit up, galvanized. I grab my pen, determined: "FAMILY WEEKEND" I scrawl across the three free days. There. I don't know what we're going to do yet, maybe nothing, but we'll be together. It's on the calendar—in ink. And now, I smile: it's summer!

Lianne Wilkens lives with her family in Manassas. She can be reached at .