Recreating a ‘90s Summer

What would it mean to approach summer like a second childhood?

Earlier this month, our family took a trip two hours north of home to Nisswa for what has become our annual family cabin week. We spent four full days with my extended family. There were 14 of us in total, with six kids in the mix, ranging in age from 1 to 8.

As has become more common with these annual trips, we crossed paths with one another more often than we spent time together in the same space. I was delighted if we caught our nieces taking on the water slide before our sons were ready to move on from where we were, and would wave an enthusiastic “hello” in passing, so they’d know I was there. Understandably, each of us was on our own schedule, fitting in activities around the nap times of the youngest or the preferences of the oldest.

As for my husband and our boys, there were two wooden playgrounds accessible from the cabin where we were staying, which became the biggest hit of the week for R and Q (perhaps tied with the promise of a s’more by the campfire each evening). The main attraction was one of the play structure’s thick tire swings, which hung by three yellow ropes beneath its main wooden platform.

Forget the fact that, at home, we have three parks within walking distance that we visit often; these were new, untapped playgrounds, and therefore worthy of deep exploration.

There has been a rallying cry on social media as of late, among Millennial parents in particular, to “recreate a ‘90s kid summer” for today’s children. A USA Today article posted last week explained it like this:

“The idea is to recreate the core childhood memories of a typical summer in the 1990s, such as running through sprinklers, drinking from the garden hose, and chasing after the ice cream truck.”

Hashtags related to the topic are skyrocketing across social media, with some influencers taking a more comedic approach. But a quick internet search revealed that this concept is not new. Articles with titles similar to the USA Today piece have been published each June across popular sites for several years now. It’s clearly a topic that resonates.

In an article titled “When the World Was Low-Res: Why 90s Childhood Was Magic,” writer Nick Lee begins with:

“Nostalgia is a liar, but she’s the best kind of liar. She tells you that the past was easier, even though it probably wasn’t. She tells you the world made sense, even though—if you go back and ask your eleven-year-old self—he’d probably confess that he didn’t understand jack. But if you were a kid in the nineties, you lived in a reality that was about to end. You just didn’t know it yet.”

He argues that today’s children face fewer limitations around what they can consume, whereas kids in the ‘90s existed in what he calls “a low-resolution universe—literally and metaphorically.”

“There was a strange comfort in the limits,” he wrote. “If you missed The Magic School Bus, you missed it. The show just evaporated into the ether, as if the universe itself was saying, Maybe pay more attention next week. There was no On Demand, no algorithm spoon-feeding you Because You Watched Bill Nye. The world was unapologetically indifferent to your schedule.”

I’d argue that kids these days are placed inside a different kind of structured limitation. A similarly popular topic online is the tendency of Millennial parents to “overparent.” We’re often called “overprotective,” “controlling,” and “fearful.” With a hyperfixation on our children’s well-being, we’re bubble-wrapping our kids in curated schedules, leaving little room for error, injury, or (some would argue) exploration.

Lately, I’ve been starting my mornings by working my way through the archives of Jeannine Ouellette’s Writing in the Dark newsletter. (It’s a gem for any writer—please take this as my recommendation and check it out for yourself!) On Monday, Jeannine landed in my inbox with a lovely essay, The Wilderness Has Teeth, But It Sings, about taking her four-year-old grandson to a rustic log cabin, a ways up along Minnesota’s North Shore over the weekend:

“Every trail, including the one from our dock to the cabin door, is a tangle of gnarled roots and spilled rocks that sometimes come loose underfoot, like memory. The cabin is crooked, leaning slightly forward, as though it remembers something we do not. There’s no traffic here, only the surprisingly loud announcements of the hummingbirds outside the screen porch. That, and the slap of lake water against rock.”

Earlier this year, in late spring, I attended an event at The Loft, a local nonprofit literary center, where Jeannine hosted the poet and memoirist Maggie Smith for a conversation about her new craft book, Dear Writer. A week or so before the event, I had happened upon Maggie’s memoir, You Could Make This Place Beautiful, in a new bookstore that had recently opened within walking distance of my office in Minneapolis. I purchased it after reading the opening page and proceeded to devour it at the airport, on the plane, and during the evening hours of a late March work trip.

Every year, I read a book or two that I know will live within the corners of me forever, and this is one of them.

I often think now about something Maggie said at the event: every day, when she takes a walk, she follows the same route around her neighborhood, in a town she has lived in her whole life, and she challenges herself to see the newness in it. She touches tree bark, for example, and feels the leaves of her neighbors’ trees between her fingers to see how the dew has settled on them.

“There she goes again,” she said, chuckling, referencing how she imagines her neighbors must see her, watching her gallivant across their properties.

Cabin weeks with my extended family bring me back to when I was a kid, when my siblings and I would take similar trips with our parents. We’d stay at a cabin along Lake Superior or at a resort in the Nisswa area. Now, in taking our boys on the same kind of getaway, there’s a comforting and nostalgic familiarity in the “Are we there yet?” calls from the back seat. When we head toward Superior, there’s a familiar comfort in the tree-lined drive outside the city.

When I think of my ‘90s summers, I think of chalk and sprinklers in the backyard and running after the ice cream truck, yes, but I also think of the North Shore’s crisp morning air and the cool breeze that came off the water. I think of walking across the rocks that lined the shore, each one unique, varying in shades of gray and cream. And I think of the way the sunset sparkled each night as it set on the water’s horizon.

This summer has felt both scheduled and unguarded, busy and free. We were go-go-go at the cabin, but also, we had nowhere to be other than at the top of the slide, watching boats come in, or at the edge of the dock, watching fish swim beneath us. By the end of our time in Nisswa, R and Q had memorized where each playground’s spider webs were. At the edge of the dock, we counted each web’s strands, lit up by the sunlight. We examined the bugs caught inside them, identified them, and gave them names.

It felt like a ‘90s summer to me: us at the beach’s edge, us by the water. And since returning from the cabin, I’ve seen visions of a ‘90s summer all around me. Just yesterday, two kids down the block stood behind a makeshift lemonade stand, a dad played catch with his young son at the local park, and a line had formed out the door at our neighborhood ice cream shop. Jeannine wrote, further along in her essay:

“Inside, the old pine floor bounces on its concrete blocks. Outside, the constant ebb and flow of mosquitoes. All of it is an exhale. The pine needles and woodsmoke, the lichen and the fallen trees, the mystery of the loons.”

We call ourselves busy, and we often don’t stop going until the boys are secure in their beds each evening. But watching my kids delight in discovering a new ant hill on the sidewalk we take to get to the park, or seeing R conquer a new slide or playground challenge, or hearing their voices echo in unison as they swing: all of it is an exhale for me.

Perhaps that’s what it’s really about: a longing within ourselves for the summers of our own past, when observing, playing, and paying attention weren’t just encouraged, but expected. Even required.

Perhaps we’re doing okay at giving our kids a ‘90s summer.

Perhaps we’re giving ourselves one.

MONDAY PROMPT SERIES

“Being sensitive, attuned, observant—these things don’t just improve your writing, they improve your life,” Smith wrote in Dear Writer.

This is exactly what the writing life has done for me, ever since I opened my arms to it and let it take up space. Since I gave it a “seat at the table,” as my wise writing teacher told me early last year.

Stumbling upon Maggie’s book, deciding to buy it, and then finding a writing group that led me, on a whim, to this event—it all felt like a magical coincidence. Like the universe was nudging me: open your eyes, tune in, pay attention.

Writing has been a gentle friend, whispering, “Come here. Pay attention.”

Writing has been a gentle friend, whispering, “This could be your way through.”

I’m so glad I listened.

For the next 8 weeks, on the remaining Mondays of this fleeting summer, I’ll be posting a new prompt on Substack to inspire you to pay attention and write your way through what you see.

Want to join me?
Subscribe to my Substack to get a note from me each Monday.

Here’s to rediscoveries, paths that feel new again, and a second childhood summer.