It has been the same story every summer for the past 20 years: a conflict between the desire to kick back and chill out, and the guilt triggered by taking time off. (When I lived in Britain, I could stretch this period of relaxation out to a fortnight. In the US, where no one takes two weeks off at a time, anxiety kicks in after roughly 10 days.) It’s the most self-defeating dynamic there is – taking leave, only to fret that you’re not “using” it profitably. How am I being improved by this holiday? Am I catching up on my reading? Am I seeing and doing new things? Am I recharging in a way that will sharpen my performance come the first week of September? It would be nice, one day, to stop doing this.
This summer, I’ve come the closest I’ve been to silencing this voice. It hasn’t happened by design, but rather, as is often the case with parents of young children, by becoming aware of an unhealthy behaviour because I’m passing it down. In June, I chose a summer camp for my kids that promised to improve them through eight hours of intense activity a day. From nine to five, for six weeks, they would be in a programme with almost no breaks, no fun in the sprinkler, no goofing off. Instead, they would be living (my) dream of having new skills – in this case, ballet, music and voice – drummed into them. After a week, one came home crying and the other looked miserable. I ripped them both out, with no idea how we’d get through a further eight weeks of summer.
There are practical reasons behind the seasonal warehousing of kids, particularly if you’re a single parent who works. But obviously, it’s not only that. The mad impetus to ruin the good times comes from some other, deep place. What is it? Capitalism? Calvinism? Two summers ago, I interviewed Martin Amis and think often of how he framed his struggle with this type of guilt. We were at the tail end of the first intense Covid wave, during which, he said, he’d found it increasingly hard to work. “Well, I’m having a rest,” he told himself, but it didn’t hold water. “There’s the horrible Protestant work ethic that says otherwise. The word ‘God’ didn’t come up in the house when I was growing up, but the ethic was there by osmosis. I remember once having a really nice drink in Paris with my wife and a friend of ours; and being really uneasy because I wasn’t getting on with something.”
I think of Bill Gates, who famously said he loved getting sick while on holiday, since it meant the time was at least put to good use. I think of an assembly at my high school – intensely weird that I should remember this, three decades on – in which the head of the business studies department told us that summers were for self-improvement, and that the previous summer, he’d taught himself touch-typing. I was thrilled by this message, which is probably appropriate at 15 when you’re fresh out the gate. But maybe – just maybe – 30 years on, it’s OK to take a break.
So here we are at the beginning of August, navigating endless, rudderless days. With nowhere to be in the mornings, my children have become practically nocturnal. Every night, we potter about until after midnight, which means they sleep until lunchtime the next day. The black circles under their eyes have disappeared. No one is shouting at anyone to put on their shoes and get out the door. I get my work done in the five hours before they wake up, then we go to the pool, the park or the climbing gym. They’ve learned to ride bikes. They’re watching a lot of telly. I’m spending an enormous amount of money on snacks and swim lessons, but apart from that, there’s zero outlay. It’s like we’re cosplaying the 70s.
Still, the guilt is there, lurking in the shadows. Is this really OK? What are we achieving with all this? Is it making us better people? Are we “wasting” the summer? Last week I panicked and asked my children if they wanted to do a week of martial arts camp. They looked at me, appalled. Quite apart from the fact that getting anywhere for 9am would probably kill us at this stage, it went against the ethos of the summer. Patiently, as if explaining it to someone who is slow on the uptake, my daughter spelled out why this is the best summer ever: “Every day is a weekend.”
