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8.10.2023

Then Versus Now

Now that summer is officially underway, I thought this would be a great time to talk about what summer means to us all. I have written before about what summer was like when I was a kid, so I thought that today I would talk about the then vs. now. 

Then: We used to have a campfire every weekend. We would roast marshmallows and hot dogs and just stand there, flipping from front to back to keep both sides of us warm after a cold river swim. Now: I might whip out the backpacking stove on a trip to make coffee or rehydrate my dinner, but I am not really a big campfire person. I guess part of it is that it smells and I am going to be wearing the same clothes for several days and they are already going to be smelly enough, so I don't really want to walk around smelling like a forest fire on top of it all. The other part is that sometimes there are a ton of mosquitoes and I would rather just chill in the tent and read. In other words, I am a party pooper. 

Then: We used to sleep outside in the backyard in the summertime. All of my cousins would be there and we would be lined up, sleeping bag to sleeping bag, under the stars. Now: While I have never slept in my current backyard, I definitely still sleep outside on a regular basis! A modern summer usually involves at least two weekends and and at least two weeks of camping and backpacking each year! I don't cowboy camp (sleep with no tent) as much as I did then, but I do like to sleep in the tent without the rainfly on it and gaze at the stars through the mesh! Another big change is that I use a sleeping pad now, whereas we used to sleep right on the ground. 

Then: I would spend a couple of weeks each summer with my aunt and uncle, who live in the Bay Area. I could eat what I liked, watch MTV all day, hang out with my baby cousins, and go watch the Giants with my uncle. Now: I live in the Bay Area; I usually go to at least one Giants game per year, and I eat what I like, although I guess now I should be providing my aunt and uncle with their favorite foods instead! Also, my baby cousins all now have babies themselves! 

Then: We used to spend endless hours at the river, swimming, chasing white rocks, having contests of who can stay under the water the longest, or swim across the river the fastest, or throw a rock the furthest. We could entertain ourselves for hours. We used to do endless loops of floating down the rapids in a tube and then walking a half mile back up the river and floating down again. Now: I still jump in a body of water any time I get the chance, but I don't spend the same amount of time in the water. Last year we did have a cousins weekend and we all went to the old swimming hole and swam and jumped off the rocks and it was almost like old times, except we are all more careful not to hurt ourselves these days (sigh, getting older is hard sometimes). On the flip side, we had better snacks! 

Hanging at the beach with Broski

Then: I had to work every summer because my parents owned their own business and summer was the busy time. Many weekends had events and this is where I could really make and save some money, which I would then use to buy my own school clothes later in the summer. Now: I still have to work every summer but now I try to take a week off for each of the summer months and go somewhere and get outside! Unfortunately, I also still have to buy my own school clothes. 

What were summers like when you were younger? What things do you still do now that you did back then (or how have things changed if they have)?

18 comments:

  1. Summer was everything when I was a kid. It was a mix of no school, riding everywhere on my bike, and yes yes yes watching MTV all day long.

    I do OK with summer as an adult - lots of family parties with bonfires, lots of outdoors activities, and not to brag but this summer I took TWO ONE WEEK LONG VACATIONS!!! One by myself and one with the fam.

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    1. Two vacations sounds excellent! I think we need to keep summer fun and having time off to do fun stuff is part of that!

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  2. I have never slept outside under the stars (without a tent; I've tented many times). This feels like something I really should have done by this point in my life?!

    Summer is sooo different for me now. When I was growing up we spent about 1/2 the summer at our cottage which was off grid - no running water or electricity. It was INCREDIBLE. I would read and swim and pick wild raspberries. I loved summer. Now, summer is my toughest season, juggling work/kids and just all sorts of craziness. Now fall is my absolute favourite season; I prefer the weather (warm, but not hot), but mostly I just crave the return to routine!

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    1. Oh, yes, you definitely need to sleep out under the stars! You can just lay a tarp and sleeping bag down in the backyard! It is so fun and you can watch shooting stars while you drift off to sleep. I highly recommend it. Also the kids probably would like looking for constellations and planets; at least I like doing it so I feel like they would :)

      We had running water and electricity, but no TV (or cell or internet obviously) and so we spent hours reading and swimming and playing tag and doing headstands etc. I kind of miss that simple life, although I wonder if it was harder for my parents than it was for me.

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  3. This was a fun comparison! Sounds like you still really know how to live it up in the summer! Summers when I was a kid seemed like endless stretches of outdoor/unsupervised time. I remember playing outside for hours, either at home, or in town with a friend. We would roam all over town together, rollerblade with the skater kids, buy penny candy at the market. It was just months and months of doing nothing and I loved it.

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    1. Yes! Penny candy! I used to visit my grandma and she would give us 50 cents and we would go to town at the penny candy store. I went when I was older (in my teens) and some of the candy was 3 or 5 cents by then, but it was still fun!

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  4. looks like not too many changes despite how different life is now. I am starting to realize how much we change, and how little we do when observe from the outside. I met with my elementary school classmates this summer, and it surprised me how little they've changed in my eyes.

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    1. I guess who we are as a child does shape who we are now, even if we do not feel that we are the same! I know I do not have as much down time as I did then, and when I do, it is much more intentional, but the love of the outdoors has not changed, that is for sure!

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  5. Wow, you really had some amazing summers as a kid! Mine weren't quite as adventurous, but I was extremely lucky to be a kid in the 1970s. AND, my parents were school teachers, so summers were very leisurely for the entire family. We spent the summers playing outside, unsupervised, roller skating, riding bikes, roaming around... I never wanted to go to camp because I loved my unstructured summers so much. Summers now are quite different of course! But it still seems leisurely (a little) without the kids' school schedule. Summer in Florida is not the best time, weather-wise, so I tend to do more things outside at other times of the year.

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    1. I never went to camp, and I do feel that we were mostly unsupervised. Even going to the beach once we were a certain age, we would do alone (and tubing in the rapids etc.) I don't feel like kids have that much freedom anymore, but maybe that is just looking at it from an adult/outsiders point of view?

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  6. I have never "cowboy camped." I have actually barely slept in a tent either because my parents had a camper. We were very crammed in there so a tent might have been a bit better actually! Our summers sound somewhat similar in terms of time with cousins. I spent so. much. time. with my cousins! That is something that my kids won't really experience since they are so much younger than their older cousins and they live far from the cousins closest in age to them. But I am trying to give them as much cousin time as i can and my nieces and nephews are, for the most part, very good with them (a few have no interest - which is fine because they are teens!).

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    1. Our cousins were born in groups, basically in about 8 or 10 year waves. My dad has cousins that are his age, and some that are between his and mine and then he has some that are his "generation" but my age (who I still call cousins), and then I have a group of about 5 of us who are "my age" (within about a 5 year range) and then we have a second set about 10 years below us and then the older ones had kids and then the younger ones had kids, so we basically have about a 5-8 person age group every 10 years or so...so I was definitely not as close to my younger cousins or older cousins when we were younger but now that we are all older I think that gap is less important than it was when we were 10 and 1 or 20 and 10!! (**but we always put up with each other, no matter what/when! :) ) See if you can untangle that!

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  7. Grew up in Soviet Union (Russia) so my summers were filled with lots of gardening at the summer house for survival purposes. My family grew vegetables then canned them for winter. Russians call these summer houses with plots of land "dachas" - houses on the outside of the city that can only be used in the summer. Trips to the lakes, sometimes, mainly staying outside till dark and/or when mom started yelling. Lots of playing, a little TV here and there. No summer camps (didn't have money + mom mistrusted Soviet education). Apart from gardening (for pleasure not for survival as before), nothing else is similar to my life now :)

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    1. Your mention of dachas reminds me of a book a read called Secrets We Kept, which was about Dr. Zhivago and Boris Pasternak and his muse Olga. They always seem to be retreating to his dacha! I think it is a historical fiction, heavy on the fiction, but it was an entertaining book!

      I can understand why your Mom mistrusted Soviet education in those days! And I guess it is probably good (?) that a lot of now is not similar to then!

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  8. I have never "cowboy camped" either, though I'm trying to think where/how I could ever actually do this without likely getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. Unfortunately, they LOVE me.... and in Wisconsin in summertime they are usually plentiful. It sounds cool though!

    When I was a kid my summers were THE BEST. My mom was a teacher, so she had summers off and could take my sister and I to do fun things. But my best memories are just of being around our house. We had a screen porch and a really pretty yard and I would eat my cereal out there at the corner table every day. We would often go on bike rides to McDonald's for breakfast too! I used to always get an apple danish, which I don't think they sell anymore. Haha. My mom did lots of "spring cleaning" type stuff in the summers and I have so many good memories of the scent of Pine Sol and soap operas on the TV while my sister or friends and I played in our basement rec room or outside, with the smell of random rainstorms or thunderstorms wafting in and out the open windows.... Ahhh. I'd love to go back, if I could!! I sometimes worry a little bit that I'm somehow not giving my kids the same summer memories. But I have to work in the summer... :( I suppose they probably are forming their own positive memories, even if they might not look just like mine.

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    1. I would say that your kids will have their own memories!! My parents owned their own business which was a summer resort (cabins, camping, tubing etc.) and so their busy time was summer so we did not really do family things (unless you count me also working!) in the summer! However, I still have fond memories of summer! I am sure your kids are forming their own memories around things that you don't even realize are so fun (Hello -- family cruise! Sports! Ice cream! A week with the grandparents...etc.)

      Your mention of eating cereal on the porch reminds me of going to visit my uncle in DC when I was in college (in the summer, which is SO SO humid) and sitting on his porch every morning having coffee and shooting the breeze. We probably only did it for a few days as we did not stay long, but that memory still sticks with me!

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  9. I loved summers as a kid/teen. During the summer break, we would ride our bikes to the local public pool and hang out with our friends. I miss having long summers off.

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    1. I used to love the pool. I did not live in town, where the pool was, so it was a special treat to go and stay with a friend and go to the pool! However, I think my worst sunburn ever was from one of those pool days!

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