Beauty for Boredom

A Summer Exercise in “Free Play”

A friend recently told me about her sister-in-law’s “1990s-themed” summer. Her previous summer had been too programmed, so this season, she deliberately cut the extracurriculars. The family played more board games. They deliberately left margin for downtime.

As a child of the 1990s, I can appreciate the sentiment. Mine was perhaps the last generation that roamed freely. There was a good-sized group of girls on our street, and we would travel to and from different friends’ houses all day long. I remember very little adult supervision, other than somebody or other’s mother feeding us lunch or handing out the occasional Band-Aid. I do remember being required to phone home (from the friend’s...