Weekends stink

Really.  Here's why:
The weekends used to be fun, restful, and quiet.  They would begin on Fridays, typically at a pub or a club or a bar or a restaurant or a party, always with friends.  Saturdays would feature laundry and a little house cleaning; exercise of some sort; trips to the beach; shopping for things other than food; maybe dinner out.  I would hit the 8AM service at the Church of the Advent on Sunday mornings, because of the quiet, meditative service with no music and few parishioners.  For the 15 years (but who's counting) of our courtship, DH and I would ride our bikes along the Charles into Boston nearly every Sunday.  We would buy a NY Times (an actual paper version) and ride with it to the Esplanade and we would sit there and drink iced tea and read the entire paper and then ride back to Watertown (me) and Newton (he) and catch up later for take-out and football or movies on TV.

So what happened?  Matrimony and home ownership and, of course, the kids.

I don't blame matrimony, because, up until the part with the kids, very little changed in our weekend routine.  Home ownership, though, has been one of the most overrated rites in which I've willingly participated.  Why can't I just call the landlord anymore?  Life was significantly easier when I wasn't the one who was responsible for the leaves in the yard and the grass and the crumbling steps and cracked driveway and damp basement and perennial garden and trees (I am responsible for the trees! In my yard!) and the garage that may someday just fall off of the rest of the house and the snow removal and the planting of the bulbs.  So there went Saturdays.

And then there are the kids.  And I don't blame them, because when they were small, there wasn't much that was expected.  A few birthday parties; walks to the park; a play date here or there.  But the kids got bigger.  And the Law is, apparently, that Down Time is a Great Sin.

When I was a kid, back in the Dark Ages, we spent Saturday mornings watching TV.  Unsupervised, unstopped, largely ignored.  TV was the babysitter.  When we got bored with the TV, we went outside and played with the other kids.  Again, unsupervised and largely ignored.  I remember dance lessons when I was very little, and Girl Scouts, which took place after school.  Organized sports didn't begin until 7th grade.  Until then, we just played.  We played hide and seek, and Barbies, and with blocks (building houses for the Barbies), and stickball, and kickball.  We rode bikes.  We read books.  We went to Sunday School and then we went home and played.  Sometimes, someone would take us to a playground or park, but usually we were expected to entertain ourselves.  That was it.  I truly do not remember any parental involvement in all of this unless we got in trouble for sneaking through the back yard of the mean old lady who lived behind our house or when I fell and broke my arm.

Today, there are all sorts of child-related things that take precedent over everything else.  My two boys are slackers in our neighborhood because they typically do only 1 or maybe 2 sports per season.  My friends who have girls spend inordinate amounts of time shuttling from dance to gymnastics to basketball to Brownies.  Some friends have kids, boys and girls, who play ice hockey, which is the largest parental sacrifice of all.  There is soccer (and travel soccer), basketball, lacrosse, baseball (and summer baseball, and City League Baseball, and Fall Ball), Karate, Pop Warner football, flag football, and skills clinics for all of them.  There are music lessons and music recitals and dance recitals and children's theater and Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts and CCD and Hebrew school.  There isn't enough time on Saturdays to fit all of this in, so it spills over into Sundays.

AND, parents are expected to BE THERE for ALL of it, often including practices.  Frankly, when I saw my then-five-year old play rookie baseball once, that was all I need to see, thank you very much.  So, I started volunteering at the Little League Shack and friends would come over to tell me about the spectacular play my son had made in Center Field.  If a kid in Rookie Little League actually gets a piece of glove on the ball, that's a spectacular play.  I think that, when I am ensconced in my nursing home rocking chair, I will have enough memories of my cute little boys catching or throwing or hitting a ball to fill my time.

So, if this is the expectation in grade school, what happens next?  When am I able to miss a game?  The answer right now is: if the other kid has a game in a different city at the same time.  Parents: how have we allowed this to happen?

I want my weekends back.