The Summer

I am preparing myself for the impending time ahead. A time when I will have weird feelings about my neighbourhood…similar to owning it all! Yes, i feel like a queen every July, (since the last two Julys, i.e.). I can sympathise when people don’t get it, but the reason is quite simple really.

Come June end, and people start leaving Dubai in droves. By week one of July, the whole community is practically a ghost town. All you can see is cars parked in the garages, getting baked in the sun and coated for free by the sand that caresses them. The pool is free the whole day, and we choose late evenings to venture out when the weather is at least bearable for one hour! I am sure the life guard does not like us in July though, because if it were not for us, he could have requested the Management to close the pool for the sweltering summer...I feel sorry for him, really.

The traffic is lesser on the roads, safer since there are lesser (and hence, lesser irate, careless) drivers on the road and it is a pleasure (for a change!) to cruise on Dubai roads. (By the way, even the doctors are not available, so you have got to be really careful and not fall sick in July-August in Dubai!) We have more visitors, thanks to Dubai Summer Surprises, but we know that they come here for shopping and will go back soon. The schools are closed, so we can take things easy, get up late, stay up late, plan the day, or do nothing at all...

Yes, July here is a more relaxed month than most people imagine. However, there is a downside of being a queen...loneliness. Most of the kids' friends are away and that makes me more vulnerable to banging my head on the wall in desperation. Yes, i become desperate trying to balance fun and edutainment for the kids. The summer camps all look the same- and i would hate to push the kids out of the house in the morning in holidays too!

I remember we used to make lots and lots of plans for our summer break, not realising that we had 'holidays' homework' too to take care of,  and ignorant of our parents’ plans for us. I always thought holidays were for fun, and nothing else, and it was quite contradictory to the wiser view that time was not to be wasted…translated as, ‘holidays are to learn something new!”. Now, a parent, I realise that too…and find it equally hard to motivate my kids to use their holiday time to practise Maths, learn Hindi, or a new skill, or simply, help me in the seemingly boring household chores. (The kilos I put on last summer learning and experimenting baking with kids, and then sampling our experiments are a constant reminder that I should not push them towards kitchen this year!)

The much anticipated break finishes so soon that when we look back; we ask ourselves, what did we do all summer? But then, holidays always seem to fly because good times pass faster, in our minds...Well, faster or slower, it is high time the schools close- it is nearing 50 degrees now...and i am looking forward to my tenure as a queen!!!