Ahhh, Fall is here.  I don’t know about you, but this summer flew by like no other before. Here and gone so fast, like a meal at chipotle—hot spicy and delicious, only to exit our lives/intestinal tracts seemingly too unexpectedly quick.

In summer our adult lives go on mostly the same, while we are left to grapple with our children’s lack of structure and routine.  Being home from school, they seem dumbfounded that we have jobs and doctor appointments and exert some attempt to work out or get our hair done once out of two times per year we can manage. With incredulous disbelief, our kids marvel at why we can’t drop everything at a moment’s notice to bring them to their friend’s pool or grab a playa bowl on a Wednesday at 2pm. Welcome back, School Days, with your boring reliability of predictable chaos.

Our kids are various ages, so the younger ones were still in summer camps, while the 15 year olds were encouraged to get summer jobs.  Summer camp schedules are a cruel mistress who has start times after your work begins and ends before your work day is over. Thank god for the moms who participate in a carpool which takes an excel spreadsheet to organize, and which I still routinely muck up on my end.  As far as the summer job thing goes, I didn’t push it too much. My 15 year old stepson finally got a job at a snack counter of a local country club which really meant just mostly hanging out with friends while hiding behind a bush. My 15 year old daughter tried with some effort to get a local retail job but found they often are given to older kids home from college.  This, coupled with her committing heavily to her cross country training this summer, gave me a realization. When I thought about it, I just wanted her to have one more summer where she could be a kid, as this is mostly stripped from our younger generations almost as soon as they enter elementary school. I think about our gen x summers, doing dangerous tricks on our bikes, hanging out at the Orange Julius and frolicking on the beach. I mean, I was a total nerd who started working at a local veterinary hospital when I was 14, but this was my choice, not something forced by my parents, and I still had plenty of time to just be a lazy teen, gabbing on my see-through Swatch phone. As much as I think we can over-coddle our kids these days, I also think there’s enormous pressure put on them by school and society (in the form of social media mostly of course) and the subsequent anxiety that leads to self-pressure just augments all of that.  They are the Covid Kids and this has had to really fuck them up in ways we won’t even fully know for years to come. Anxiety is a baseline for most everyone of that generation (also really anyone who breathes air these days) and any transition or new experience can be fraught with inertia-inducing worry.  That worry translates to us as parents, making us feel that we must fix it, solve it. Push them so they aren’t loser bums but not too much that they start plucking out all their eyebrow hairs one by one. Allow them space to be kids while they are kids but not kids who are on social media and video games all day. Speaking of video games, we must allow them a little time because it does help with fine motor skills and ALL their friends are doing it but not so much their brain melts out the back of their head. Encourage productivity and goal setting but also remind them to be good with who they are now and it’s about being good enough but about also striving for best versions of themselves. So fucking exhausting, right?

So I’ll tell you that, while I struggle with this every day, summer or school year, I had a moment of clarity on our recent blended family end-of-summer vaca.

From Jersey we went to the Catskills with our blended family and my sister, her husband and their daughter (almost the same age as Shep). It was a calculated trip: not too many days or too far for the older ones to have FOMO on what their friends were doing and I researched all the cool watering holes and the piece de resistance—a place called Fawn’s Leap where you can cliff jump off a waterfall. I googled it, YouTubed it, it seemed legit and safe. And the kids bought into it full-stop.  Every day I was asked “is this the day we jump off a cliff?” No, no I would respond, that’s the last day of the trip, holding it out as a prized carrot.  The last day came and we traveled about 50 minutes to the area of Kaaterskills Falls. Sean and I had visited this gorgeous spot when we stayed in Woodstock for our little honeymoon. There’s now a trolley you must take or risk being towed if you park on the side of the road to hike down. We boarded and the driver asked where we were going. “Ice Climber  stop” I replied confidently, since the internet had informed me this was the best access to Fawn’s Leap, “we want to go to the cliff.” “Oh no,” the driver said, shaking his head, “you have kids and Fawn’s Leap is no place for kids.” Realizing he was probably referring to the 5 year olds, I smiled and assured him, “no, the teens want to go.”  The driver then proceeded to tell me a teen had actually died there this past year. My face flushed and my heart rate shot up and I didn’t ask questions. My sister, who doesn’t enjoy being challenged, told the driver that’s ok, just bring us there anyway, thanks. Yes, little sis, let’s double down on our stupidity. Probably the teen who drowned was just trying some crazy stunt or it was a freak accident I thought both judgmentally and obtusely, in an attempt to soothe myself.

We were left off at a spot to access a place called The Cove, a beautiful little watering hole.  Soon the hiking rocks to the side of the water vanished and we were left deciding to go forward in the water or back and climb up the steep rocks. I knew Fawn’s Leap was on the other side of the roadway and there would be a crossing of some kind to get there so I acted like this was part of the plan–a little rock climbing out of the ravine.  The kids seemed excited; my sister gave me her best what the fuck look. 

We clambered up the rocks to the road, walked a short ways and crossed over when we heard excited voices and saw “Keep Out,” “Do Not Enter” and “Private Property” signs.  We vaulted over the roadway bar (yeah, I can still vault) and found ourselves at the top of Fawn’s Leap, a rushing waterfall, cascading down to a large pool, 24 feet down below.  There were some older teens/young adults there, one with a wetsuit on, which I found strikingly practical.  There were a bunch of young guys laughing and egging each other on.  My kids were quiet and took it all in, and they started making plans to jump. My sister yelled to us they were headed back to the bus pick up site and would meet us there.  Clearly, she was done with my stupidly choreographed shenanigans.

As our kids were observing the older teens building up their courage to jump, I started to have a full blown panic attack and decided to head over to a nearby large rock, partly to physically distance myself far from the maddening crowd but also in case I had explosive stress diarrhea in my pants. Our kids were pointing and laughing at me as I would intermittently peak my head above the rock to see what stage of idiocy they were in—1) about to jump, 2) jumping, or 3) jumped/probably dead.

I came out from the behind the rock to once again implore my 15 year old daughter not to jump. I had already beseeched her multiple times please don’t do it. She was angry and wanted to know why we had come here if she couldn’t do the very thing we had intended on doing. That is a great question, sweetie, and yes I am wondering about my own judgment here. I took deep breaths and tried to hold back tears. “I brought them here and now they’re gonna die because of me” I said, fully convinced of this dramatic statement. Sean told me it’s ok and rubbed my back, although I could see he was internally freaking out a bit too.

“Dad! Am I allowed to jump?” my 15 year old stepson asked Sean. In life-threatening/ daredevil feats, we defer to the by-blood and by-law custodian. “Well, I don’t think you should, and I prefer you not, but you’re free to do what you want to do,” Sean calmly replied. That mother-effer and his Socratic methods!

This angered Sloane even more. “I’m so mad at you mom, I can’t even believe this!” she told me in her most fed up and frustrated voice. All I could do was whimper back “I’m sorry.”

One of the older teens we had seen when we arrived decided to finally jump around this point, as did another a moment later who was starting up from another cliff about another 12 feet up. They both ended up in the basin and easily swam out. This was all Declan needed to see and, although visibly nervous, he went for it. He too ended up in the basin, unscathed, and swam out. Sloane turned angrily towards me again.

“Ok ok ok Sloane, yes you can do it” I weakly acquiesced. Thank you, Declan for being our brave guinea pig.  And then she jumped. She jumped off a cliff I brought her to, 24 feet to the water below that was being fed by a waterfall. And if that isn’t a metaphor for parenthood I don’t know what the fuck is. She swam out, scampered back up the path to the cliff and had a giant beaming smile on her face. Holden followed right after. Sawyer was content to watch and take videos of her idiot siblings.

Was it the right call?  Oh my god, I don’t know.  They came out ok, so I suppose so.  But afterwards, on our bus ride back, I gathered the courage to google how that teen died there last year.  It was in the afternoon, and two 16 year-old kids jumped.  They got caught in the hydraulics of the basin and could not swim out.  Only one was able to be rescued.  The place was technically shut down ever since.  Somehow, google had failed to show me this most horrific tale in my original search. This time, in my deepest of dives, I also encountered another story, this one explaining the origins of the name “Fawn’s Leap.”  Legend goes that a mother deer jumped over the falls from one rock to another, her baby trailing behind her.  In one version, the fawn makes it, soaring over the other side.  In another version, the fawn misses the rock and falls to her death. 

Our original guilt is bringing our kids into this crazy life.  We want them to experience, to grow, to learn.  We know we can only speak of our own mistakes and they must make their own and yet this terrifies us.  We push them, then out of fear we pull them back.  When I look back on this particular instance, I search for the most predominant feeling, and realize it’s relief.  Relief that she believed she could jump, that she did jump, and that she was ok.  That in letting go, I allowed her to be her, to become the independent person she is meant to be.  Also relief in my pants as I may have pissed a little when she lept.  It’s hard to let go, but when you do, your kids will soar.