We are going to Ireland this summer. We are going to Ireland to attend one of J’s closest friend’s weddings, and we will be traveling around the country with his college crew and their families, some of my favorite people and - it turns out - some of the chillest travel partners I have ever encountered. We’ve been in a flurry of booking lodging and gauging drive times from the Giant’s Causeway to Donegal to Galway, trying to figure out what the Ring of Kerry is, exactly, and surmising that even if it all our carefully laid plans go to hell, we will be in IRELAND TOGETHER! We will find a pub and raise our glasses.

Sometimes when I have a trip, or other noteworthy event, like this on the horizon, I have a tendency to ignore the regularly scheduled plans that make up our day-to-day life in favor of concentrating on the bigger deal thing. Overall, it seems a normal, healthy way to approach adventures; part of the fun is the anticipation.

And yet, the summer is long. When talking to people about our upcoming plans (the perennial spring topic of parents as we scour the remaining camp options for our children in a mild panic) I primarily discuss our trip, quickly realizing: wait, what about the rest? Not that there’s nothing, there is. Summer’s new classics (Nora and Gabe’s sleepaway camp) and regular life (work, walking the dog) alike.

I think my tendency in recent months (years, really, or maybe my whole adulthood?) has been to allocate a lot my planning energy to the major, while not devoting enough to the everyday, and I like to - I really mean this, that’s why I’m writing it here - get better at balancing it out. It’s hard to take time to figure out the logistics of this new stage of parenting (the one they all told me about, where you are driving everyone around constantly to various activities, sometimes three or four times a day back and forth to the high school, NORA) but it is also hard to end the day exhausted from a lack thereof.

I am very good at making to-do lists. I am less good at having those to-dos make the jump from the page to the calendar where they materialize. Sometimes I get that feeling (you know the one) that I am drowning in to-dos that have been foisted upon me, as well as my own (the happy ones!) because I have not taken the few moments needed to give them their due respect and assign them a “when.” That is something I’d like to work on this summer, and from here on out.

Bear with me for a moment (I ask you to so often, I know, and apologies!) but on a seemingly unrelated, but I promise at least sort of-related, note, I was telling J this morning about how 45 has been a humbling year for me, as I’ve been hit with both arthritis and indigestion and other new aches and pains that are, without doubt, symptoms of a body less youthful.

But as I was telling him, and later, during a difficult class at a local gym that I’ve belonged to and loved for years, I started thinking, “Well, yes, arthritis in my knee that caused me to yell at the doctor (just a little) that I was ‘too young for that diagnosis,’ but, besides hurting my pride, has been largely uneventful. How lucky, all things considered.”

As the gym’s owner shouted to us (encouragingly, not scarily) that it was privilege to be able to move our bodies like this, I thought to myself, “You know what, it really is.”

This type of inspiration doesn’t work on a teenager. For instance, when you tell them to get out of their bed, they should be grateful to have parents who will make them some breakfast because they slept in, and who will drive them to school despite the fact that they are perfect capable of walking there, etc.

But it works very well on me as I contemplate these minor middle-aged complaints and this upcoming planned-and-not summer. Ireland! Books! Dinner at the pool snack bar! The fact that I can still run without pain despite this 45-year-old knee. What a privilege. How absolutely lucky.

This summer I hope to put the to-dos and steps-to-get-there on the calendar, the way I do when I am planning the bigger things like an upcoming trip. Because each and every day of this fortunate life deserves that attention.

And even if it all goes to hell, we will find a pub and raise our glasses.

Summer goals 2023:

Visit the family farm in County Armagh
Bring donations to the local animal shelter
Gabe’s room redo! (begin, at least)
Go out to dinner at Fair Haven Oyster Co.
Run three 5Ks
Go back to the Yale Art Gallery
Join a local writing group, enter a writing contest, or apply for a short-term writing fellowship or workshop (all three?!)
Visit a nearby national park
Go thrifting with Nora
Take the kids to the Playwright to hear an Irish Session
Start learning Italian using Duolingo
Tour the Glass House
Take Aidy to the mall
See at least one movie in the theater
Have a beach day
Take part in the excellent tradition of jumping off the dock in Southport
Get some kind of complicated and delicious iced coffee
Ride a bicycle
Pool drinks
Finish “Ulysses”
Date nights with J
Evening strolls with Maisie
Listen to lots of new (to me) music (suggestions welcome!)
Attend an outdoor concert
Go river tubing
(Try to) grow a watermelon