Gimme a Smile: Summer vacation through the ages

Published 7:30 am Saturday, May 30, 2026

Ah, summer vacation! Does it bring freedom or ever more stress? That depends on where you fall on the summer vacation space/time continuum.

When you’re in elementary school, you cheer for summer vacation. You might not know what day it is, but there are some hints that summer vacation is coming up. The snow is finally gone from the neighborhood, and you start shedding your coat at recess. If you want it back, you have to brave the labyrinth of the Lost and Found. You finish your last assignments and hand out your teacher gifts. Freedom is so close you can taste it. You can’t wait for those long summer days of playing outside, curling up with your new video game, and being master of your destiny. By day three you are bored out of your mind.

When you’re in high school, you have a more complicated relationship with summer vacation. Being a naturally nocturnal teenager, all you really want to do is sleep until noon and stay up until two in the morning. But you have a mission during summer vacation — find a job and save up money for college. Never mind that you would have to work over 8,500 hours at the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour to afford one year’s tuition at a prestigious institution of higher learning. If you squeeze all those hours into the three months of summer vacation, it will require a 700-hour work week to come up with those savings — before taxes, of course. You know you’re beaten before you begin. The space/time continuum can’t accommodate that kind of work schedule. You might as well roll over and go back to sleep for a few more hours.

Somehow, you manage to make it through college, with the help of a plethora of student loans. You land your first real job. No amount of schooling can prepare you for the shock when June rolls around and you don’t get three months off for summer vacation. You have to keep punching the clock, day in and day out, through the lovely summer months. When did you sign up for this?

Time passes, and you’ve got elementary school kids of your own. Now, you have a love/hate relationship with summer vacation. You love the fact that you can take a break from wake-up duty for a few months. Who wouldn’t welcome a reprieve from the constant grind of dragging a child out of bed, force-feeding them something resembling breakfast, and plying the toothbrush before wrangling them to school on time? But for the working parent, the morning routine doesn’t magically vanish, it simply morphs into a new reality of getting kids ready for daycare, summer camp, or any of the other school substitutes that keep kids safe and out of bed in the summertime. You have to ask yourself, “Is staying in bed all day really so bad for them?”

Then your kids get older and head off to college themselves. Your experience of summer vacation takes a dramatic turn. After having your kids gone for months at a time, you welcome the arrival of summer vacation. The sound of blaring music and giggling young people fills the house again. Dirty dishes pile up in the sink, dirty clothes carpet the floors, and the grocery bill soars out of sight. You don’t care. It’s so nice to have everybody back under one roof. But you notice that the rules have subtly shifted while they were away. You learn to bite your tongue to avoid the nagging that comes naturally to you. It’s time to step back and allow your kids to step up. If only they would just get out of bed before noon!

More time passes, and your kids are adults with families of their own. You retire and relax in the mornings with nothing more pressing to do than making that perfect cup of coffee. You might not even know what day it is. What does summer vacation mean to a retiree? As you drive past the school at 2:30 in the afternoon, you notice that the school zone light isn’t flashing today. You don’t have to slow down. Happy summer vacation!

Peggy McKee Barnhill is a wife, mother, and author who writes cozy mysteries under the pen name “Greta McKennan.” She likes to look at the bright side of life.