Summer holidays as a practice of imperfection

It happens

This morning while hunting for the manual to a wireless keyboard I’ve bought to try to improve my posture, a couple of brightly coloured books slipped into my hands. 

Cue a sharp intake of breath. 

They were my eight year old’s school reading record and reading book, which I’d told her effusively she couldn’t possibly have brought home since we couldn’t find them anywhere. She insisted she had. 

Now realising I must have unceremoniously shoved them above the dining room shelf along with all the other mess when clearing the table one evening, I feel a little like I’ve gaslit her. 

Three weeks into the summer holidays, this discovery seems to fit with the lesson I feel I’m working on again these days: making peace with imperfection. 

This is our first summer break since the kids started school, having been home educated until this April. I’ve had to wrestle with many wrinkles in “the plan”, which don’t need reframing so much as they need accepting.

Home education didn’t work out as hoped. We couldn’t financially make it work and while admitting that is a bit fraught, it’s also relatively straightforward. 

The harder thing to accept is that our lifestyle was hard on our wellbeing (well, mine, really), that I ran out of energy to make it all work.

My eight year old looks at the found books and asks, “What will we do?” We make a plan and then I say, “It happens.” 

Another home education post pops up in my feed and I remind myself that there is nothing moral in needing to re-route. It happens.

But the transition to school and more paid work isn’t without its creases either. The kids have been fine in school. They love it, actually. A huge relief. 

We’re frequently reminded why we chose life without school but I’m able to meet these moments as opportunities to trust myself and my children. We will navigate everything we need to. 

Finding a job has been the more difficult thing. After months of applications and interviews, and no thank you’s, I’m finally starting a communications and events role soon, which is exactly what I wanted. But it has meant months of worry and financial strain - and that happens.

I’m so grateful to have found reliable work. I’m conscious that anxiety can become a holding pattern. In its grip, we keep looking for what’s wrong.

I also know that part of why I struggle to relax into relief is that there’s a road ahead before debts are paid, savings built and balance found.

So it’s meant that this first summer break from school isn’t panning out as I would have ideally wanted. Every penny is being watched. Any paid for fun is being carefully measured. Lots of ideas have been scaled back or postponed.

That happens.

Accepting that doesn’t mean shoving aside fear and sadness with a hurried “It’s going to get better” or “There are bigger things happening in the world.” 

I can choose to love the parts of me that want good things for my family and for myself while consciously releasing the idea that there is one way for these weeks to look, for this life to look.

A phrase that’s been carrying me since realising we needed to make a big life change five months ago (no time at all, really!) is “everything will unfold as it must.” Not in the sense that things happen for a reason. I don’t personally believe that. 

Things happen and then we get to decide what we do next. There’s a lot of agency in recognising this, even if it’s just for the next little step.

And we will continue to sometimes scoop important things out of the way or miss someone else’s timings. There’s no need to imbue missteps with morality. 

Simply, there is an out breath: it happens.