How To Make Summer Memories That Stick

SimonSkafar/E+/Getty Images Labor day is upon us and as I celebrate the ending of the chaotic mess that is summer for parents, I also can’t help but feel a little wistful. Did I make the most of the summer? Or, more to the point, have I made lasting memories for my kids? The answer to that, I think, is yes. But the memories are not found in volumes of ice cream, the rides at the county fair, the hours of pool time and picnics, or the (shockingly expensive) songs and bonding they had at camps. I believe that in the long term these simple joys will become part of a happy and balanced childhood, but they’re not the kind of thing they look back on and say, “remember when …?” The “remember when” moments are a different kind of fun — Type 2 fun. As former Fatherly editor Julia Holmes explained in her wonderful essay on memory and adventures, there are varying levels of fun. “The ‘fun scale,’” she writes, “which first circulated in climbing books and media in the 1980s, divides outdoor recreation into three major categories. At one end of the scale is Type 1: You expect to enjoy yourself and you do (a day at the beach). At the other end of the scale is Type 3: not even remotely fun, catastrophically bad, something never to be repeated (shipwrecked). Somewhere between those extremes is the perfect fun, the kind of fun that pushes you past yourself and (hopefully) delivers you back to yourself in better condition — stronger, happier, full of fresh gratitude for comfort and company.” T…