How do you set up a summer of joie de vivre?

"Goals" in the service of relationships and radical enjoyment of life

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Photo by Vicko Mozara on Unsplash

Last summer, I largely scrapped my “to do” list of adulting tasks. 

It included fun warm weather activities like: 

-Organizing closets and drawers

-Updating my LinkedIn page

-Finding an in-network eye doctor on our insurance plan

-Purging unused items and listing them on Facebook Marketplace and Buy Nothing.

I abandoned most of this to-do list. Which is something that I highly recommend if you can swing it. 

Instead, I adhered to another impromptu “to do” list that I had made on the Notes function on my phone. This other list was named “Things that I want to do with E the summer that she is 3,” and was a list of things I wanted to experience with my daughter the one precious summer that I would have a three-year old.

It included things like: 

-Go swimming

-Picnics at the botanical garden 

-Ride carousels

-Visit cousins

-Take Car trips to the beach while listening to Harry Styles

Guess what? It was great. And I was supremely “productive.”

The goals I made in service of my relationships and embracing enjoyment of life got ticked off easily.

And I felt this strange sensation creep back into my life that I later recognized as HAVING FUN.

(You can read the post “On quiet quitting adult expectations and having more fun” here.)

Revised 2022 Summer to-do list made with my 3yo.

This spring got off to a rough start for me in a few ways. A family that I know experienced a terrible tragedy (as you may know if you follow our Instagram account) that sent me into a dark funk.

I had my first experience with my child being hurt by another child, and having to have difficult conversations with other parents. The sky in New York City turned orange-brown and the air smelled of campfire for days while Canada burned. 

I found it hard to do a lot of things, including writing this newsletter, and arranging summer travel logistics (which always feels like moving through mud for me). And I wasn’t especially in the spirit of summer fun.

But the last couple weeks I’ve had the grace of gratitude rush at me to help snap me out of it. 

My daughter’s publicly-funded Pre-K put on a parent talent show for the kids, and because I live in a neighborhood with a lot of artists and performers, a dad who is performing on Broadway sang Disney tunes in a public school gym to a bunch of enthralled four-year olds. A professional jazz cellist played with a baby strapped to her chest while her husband played sax to an exquisite jazz arrangement of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” It was lovely and perfect. I cried. 

My daughter had her first ever sleep over at our apartment when her cousins visited from Utah. They read her a bedtime story and then all fell asleep together—three kids on one air mattress—and I don't know that I have ever seen my kid so happy and content.

Finally, this week her school had a Pre-K “moving up” ceremony to end the school year in which she played the role of “cocoon” in a performance of “The Very Hungry Caterpillar.” I really cried through this one, and not just because my child is growing up. 

This whole school year I have been crushed with gratitude for her magical neighborhood school where excellent teachers serve up warmth and wonder for the kids every day, and is one of the few integrated public schools in a city that is known for rampant segregation. 

Seeing your child succeed is one thing—but watching a little class of four-year olds from different circumstances and different backgrounds all thriving and passing a milestone together is something really profound and life-affirming. 

It’s not something that happens enough in our school systems where deep inequality is built in due to the fact that schools are funded by local tax bases—ensuring that some schools get far too much and others get far too little. 

But for one year I saw what it’s like when a whole community of kids thrive, and it made me feel something more like a whole human. And I’m grateful. 

Now I have started making my summer to-do list for "Things that I want to experience with E the summer that she is 4.” 

So far, we’ve decided that we want to find the best Halo-Halo shaved ice in the city, and E wants to have her first lemonade stand.

We want to get the entire “Fox and Rabbit” comic series from the library and read all of them.

We want to find more tiny speckled orange salamanders while we are walking in the woods.

We want to watch the new live-action The Little Mermaid movie again in the cool Magic Johnson theater on a hot day.

And we need a new #1 family album of the summer. (It will be hard to beat last year’s “Harry’s House” by Harry Styles, or Lizzo from the year before, but one can try!)

What should we listen to? What sets you up for summer joie de vivre that we should add to the list?

I’m ready for it.

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Here are two newsletters we are loving right now:

MAD WOMAN by Amanda Montei is a feast for feminist thinking, covering everything from reproductive freedom to assaults on trans youth (“The only thing kids are being groomed for is the gender binary”) to evolving understanding of sexuality. Plus, we can’t wait to get our hands into her forthcoming book, Touched Out: Motherhood, Monogamy, Consent and Control. You can subscribe to MAD WOMAN here.

We are so down to rethink motherhood, shake it from the grip of patriarchy and find new ways of being moms in the world, and Cindy DiTiberio’s THE MOTHERLODE is an essential guide on the path. It’s packed with personal reflections, book reviews and interviews. You can subscribe here.

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MATRIARCHY REPORT is written by Lane Anderson and Allison Lichter.

Lane Anderson is a writer, journalist, and Clinical Associate Professor at NYU who has won several awards for her writing on inequality and family social issues. She has an MFA from Columbia University. She was raised in Utah and is based in New York City with her partner and young daughter.

Allison Lichter is the Associate Dean at the Newmark School of Journalism at the City University of New York. She has been a writer, producer and editor for radio and print, covering the arts, politics, the economy and the workplace. She was born and raised in Queens, and lives in Brooklyn with her partner and daughter.