While many folks equate summertime with sunshine, swimming, s'mores and just plain silly fun, to me the 'S' in summer stands for Structure.
During the 1970s, as soon my school in Churchill let out, my true bunhead nature was given free reign to practice, practice, practice. Ballet was my life. The barre was better than the beach. August would find me performing in productions at Chatham College Music and Arts Day Camp.
I was convinced that I would have a career in dance. This was fueled by a well-meaning, but lying, dance teacher. Chuckie knew better than to dash a tween girl's dreams of the stage. Instead, he assured me that I was improving each year, even though he knew I lacked talent.
My daughter's summer shared the same structure, filled with dance. Twenty-five years later, not only did she dance her days away, she had the talent that I had lacked. My firstborn, Alexandra, donned leotard and tights, sweating away at Point Park College Summer Dance Intensives. She gave up pool parties, shopping with girlfriends at the mall -- and all of the typical adolescent girl pursuits -- with the hopes of a professional dance career.
Alexandra's structured summer days, trading tanning for tap, paid off when she was hired as a performer at Walt Disney World in 2006. She is now spending her summers smiling through the sweat, dreaming of Florida winters and cooler temperatures.
Briana, my 15-year-old daughter, spends her summers at Windsor Mountain Summer Camp in New Hampshire. Structured summer days and nights, where a deaf teen joins a predominantly hearing campership to create art, act and swim in a lake, are a wonderful bridge between the deaf and hearing worlds.
Briana returns to Pittsburgh with many new skills. She has learned Japanese brush painting, stained glass and how to sew a patchwork pillow. She wouldn't trade these skills for sleeping in her comfy bed in our air-conditioned house, instead of a skimpy camp mattress in a hot cabin.
When I talk to other 40-something moms, I am shocked to hear that their childhoods (and those of their offspring) did not involve structure, structure, structure. Instead, they spent the humid days of youth splashing in backyard pools, playing outside and bike riding.
My parents, both educators, viewed summer as a time to learn. I have carried on that tradition. My dance education during the school year was offset with school, homework and baby-sitting. During the summer, I studied French, typing and creative writing, in addition to ballet, jazz and gymnastics.
To this day, I cannot ride a bike. I am a poor swimmer. I can still, however, watch a dance performance and tell you the names of the steps. While secretly dancing in my kitchen, using the oven door handle for a ballet barre, I know that Chuckie is smiling down on me from above, hoping that I don't pull open the door and fall.
First Published: August 1, 2008, 1:45 p.m.
