Ice cream, splashing in the pool, hiking, museums…these are the things my children (and I) look forward to in the summer--especially summers here in Arlington. Our summers in northern Virginia are very different from the summers my family and I had a few years ago, out west in the desert. I will not mention where we use to live but I will say there were a lot of neon signs and gambling. Where we use to live, summers were so unbearable, I’m talking about temperatures in the 100’s and at 11:00 pm, it would drop to perhaps 95 degrees. Yes, it was dry heat, but to me, heat is heat. Therefore, most of our time was spent staying in-doors. We didn’t live near a pool so we had to drive there to cool off and as most parents know, lugging two children and all the pool “necessities” is no picnic. In fact, we had to drive everywhere to do anything. It took patience to wait for the air conditioning to cool us and the car down and when we reached our destination, it took more patience to look for parking. Of course, I still needed to get the kids out of the car and into the stroller then haul the “survivor kit” a.k.a. the diaper bag, onto my shoulders. By this time, the kids had lost their patience and they had a “melt down”. There was a lot of screaming and crying from the kids, as well as from me—yep, I don’t miss those summers!
Where we live now, we are within walking distance to the pools, parks, trails, libraries and ice cream shops. Of course, nowadays I don’t need the strollers and “survivor kit.” The kids are older and love to walk and bike everywhere. When it is too hot to walk, we get on the air conditioned bus and subway and take a ride to the mall and enjoy the free museums. Hooray, no more crying and screaming unless of course, I dropped my double chocolate ice cream cone.
Theresa Westfall, Arlington Transportation Partners
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