Summer Scares Me + Sketchbook Behind the Scenes

Issue #23, June 5th, 2023

Welcome to Good and Beautiful Things. Each week I explore a few of my lifelines — creativity, courage, and curiosity. I hope by sharing my experiences (or as my friend calls them, my “true stories”) you will find inspiration or encouragement. At the very least, I hope you’ll feel less alone.

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I’ve always been thankful that I don’t keep my husband’s traditional 8am-6pm work hours or sit in the endless meetings required for being part of a design and marketing team. The rigid and repetitive schedule would drive me mad. In the earlier days of homeschooling our four kids, our learning style provided a loose framework, a rhythm, to our day and still left plenty of flexibility to keep it interesting.

But the summers scared me.

Summer arrived without much fanfare. If the school year meant doing math and history at home, summer meant being at home minus the activities that brought structure to our day. It lacked the excitement that the season induced when I was a kid. As a public school student, I couldn’t wait to leave the building and teachers behind.

As a parent, I found it very difficult to maintain a rhythm in the summertime. Even with strategic planning, and a lot of blog reading to see how others did it, I couldn’t seem to get rid of the dread of summer. As a one-income family, we couldn’t throw a lot of money at the problem with pool memberships and fun vacations.

Then there were the summers that my Dad was sick. While my friends took their kids to the YMCA, I arranged babysitting and headed to the nursing home.

The anxiety of wrangling summer often kept me out of the present and before I knew it, the end of summer loomed near and left me longing for the unstructured days that I’d spend so much time trying to erase. This cycle played on repeat for years.

This summer my kids are 14, 18, 20, and 22. Our oldest daughter lives on her own, the next daughter is returning home after studying abroad in France for ten months, our son is finishing up his last few months at home before starting college, and our youngest is, well, a teenager.

This summer I’m not worried about unstructured days and how in the world to spend the time. This summer I’m worried about how quickly the season will be over and how soon the chicks will leave The Guest Nest.

This summer my plan is very simple:

Enjoy my people.

Full stop.

I’d love to hear from you. How has summer played out for you in the past? How does it look this year?

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From the Sketchbook: A Behind the Scenes Art Tour

I’m part of a year-long art class with Carla Sonheim. Here’s a look at the process from a recent assignment, including the moment when the assignment morphed from following someone else’s instructions to making it my own.

Step 1: Draw some faces. (I had a red pen sitting nearby so I decided to use it instead of black). Add very wet watercolor to the left side of the paper and spread it with a credit card. I loosely based the faces on my family.

Step 2: Drip blue paint down the page. These beginning steps are about “messing up” the perfect canvas. For some artists, these steps would drive them crazy. I love this part of the process. I love not knowing what the end product will look like at this stage.

Step 3: Paint the hair.

Step 3: Add texture/interest to the background. Paint their clothing.

Step 4: Continue adding more details, textures, and then paint the border. At this point, I’d completed all of the steps from our teacher. But I knew it wasn’t finished.

Step 5: Trust the process, trust yourself. This is where I went rogue. I grabbed some other materials and continued to add layers. I decided I really liked the contrast of the colors created with Posca markers in the background. It also pulled back some of the texture that I found distracting. The dark border wasn’t the right finish, so even though it had been part of the assignment, I cut it off and glued the faces into my sketchbook on a clean, white page.

Final thoughts: In reality, these faces don’t resemble my family that much. But that’s okay with me. I experimented with a new layering technique, starting with my teacher’s instructions and finishing up with my own instincts. I plan to try it with a different subject this week. I’m thankful to have a teacher who encourages rule-breaking!

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Words to Consider

(This was my summer as a kid.)

“Even so, as a kid, you spent very little time talking on a phone. Namely, because you were always on your bike.

You grew up on your bike. Your bicycle was your life. That’s how you lived. On two wheels.

You rode your bike everywhere. It was your only connection to the outside world. You had a permanent bike-seat imprint on your tiny buttocks.

You rode your bike on every street. Down giant hills. Across railroad tracks. Over the Appalachians. On busy highways. You would go anywhere on your bike. You were fearless.”

-Sean Dietrich, The Good Old Days

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Blessings from the Guest Nest,

-Aimee