The Summer Box

True Confessions: I'm lousy at holidays. And family traditions. And don't hold your breath waiting for me to remember your birthday.

But there's one tradition that I started over a decade ago, and it's actually important to me. On the last day of school, I fill a box with things that will usher in a season of fun: the Summer Box. It's supposed to be ready to greet the kids when they come home. When my kids were little, it was always full of popsicle makers, water guns and puzzle books. In the past few years, it's had more novels and boxes of brownie mix, and a few IOU's. But this year, I've been rushing around so much the past few weeks that I didn't get it together to make The Box.

Maybe I'm finally hitting mid-life, because instead of berating myself for being a lousy mom and disappointing the kids, I decided to just forgive and come up with a Plan B.

So.

On Tuesday, when Macdonough dismissed my now-4th-grader at 1:45 pm, I took a few sidewalk photos, gathered all the siblings-in-residence and headed out for an adventure. I grew up with a Road-Tripping Mom, and there's nothing more comforting to me than a stuffed car and a destination. In this case, I decided that the kids were just going to have to help me pick out the stuff for the Summer Box themselves. There's an off-the-beaten-path toy store in Manchester that appeals to the full 10-year age range of my kids, so that's where we went.

This year's Summer Box, carried home belatedly in a few plastic bags, included some legos, a book of madlibs and a board game** called Smallworld, chosen mainly because of the evangelical urgings of a pale-skinned and well-past-his-teenage-years fellow customer in the board game aisle.

Smallword and the Summer Box have already given us a few hours of family togetherness. And that's really what this post is about. We're not perfect. In fact, sometimes I wonder how we stay out of the papers. But staking a claim for some family time, at whatever level we can make it work, is a Balm in Gilead for this distracted, city-obsessed, under-and-overachieving mom from Middletown. It's what I always get when I open the Summer Box each year. I wish the same for you and yours.

**If you haven't ventured much beyond Monopoly and Scrabble, then you've missed a whole universe of new games that take their cue from fantasy and strategy video games. I first encountered these games at ConnectiCon, the July geek convention inspired by Japanese pop culture. At the Con, they fill half a ballroom with tables full of people playing board games (the other half holds a tournament for people who take turns bashing each other with foam swords.) And here's the only tip you'll get from this post: ConnectiCon, July 8-10 at the Hartford Convention Center. So. Much. Fun. You can google it or just read my post from 2008 on the subject here.