Bathtime is an ordeal, one that can reduce even the toughest of women to tears. You wear your brave face (read: shut your eyes tight) and turn the knob. Alas, when freezing water rains down on your two-year-old’s head, it is no surprise. You valiantly turn the knob to the left — no, the other left! — and sink to the floor in relief. Why was he already in the tub, one might ask? Ah, that was to keep the bright-orange slimy salamanders in his chubby little hands instead of in our beds. The rich most certainly do not wake up to salamanders slithering up their ears, do they?

Some days are long and hot, and calculating how long you can withstand the loud, obnoxious clunking of the AC window unit is essential to your mental health. Others are rainy and cold, the kind that can be described as “chilled to the bone” — but the children definitely don’t feel that way as they squeal with glee and splash in the wet, muddy grass. BRRRR… the ri-ri-rich?

And how can you forget about the pool? One day green, one day blue, it’s the gift that keeps on giving — keeping you on your toes, guessing. With no rhyme or reason, you can spend many an hour in deep thought, pondering the scientific effects of combining rust, water heaters, cleaning solutions, PH levels…. Have I lost you? Figures. That kind of riddle isn’t my favorite, either. But here is one that is: Does a swim without a snake or a frog sighting really count as an authentic bungalow swim?

Yet when the kids come home from camp with sun-kissed cheeks and half-wet dresses from swimming in the beautiful camp pool and still ask to jump in the green-blue water at your place, who can say no? And when the power goes down for a week, knocking out the hot water in the shower and leaving you no choice but to bring shampoo and soap down to the pool… well, isn’t that what memories are made of?

When the two-year-old can’t find his shoe and it’s finally located outside in the grass, chewed up by some squirrels and repurposed as a nest for some bird, can you not marvel at the ingenuity of the creatures whose forest you invade every summer? And when Babby insists that the children turn and smile for a picture — she mails out a summer album in September — you think, just leave them! They are quietly observing the sandal-turned-bird nest and you want to drink your iced lemonade (with mosquitoes) in peace. Nevertheless, you stand up and pull your kids into a bear hug for the picture.

And in September, when the children are fast asleep in their own beds and the AC is a silent hum, and the lights are strong and bright and unblinking, and the front door is closed and locked, and the scent of ocean and linen is misting from the diffuser, and the hot water is drained from the tub, and the iced lemonade has no mosquitoes in it, you sit down and pick up the summer book.

You leaf through each page carefully, wistfully, and think, yes, the bungalow most certainly is for the rich.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 956)