Summer break is coming up, which means many working parents are about to spend the next three months running a surprisingly complicated transportation business out of their cars.

Every year, I suffer from summer amnesia and forget how fast the structure disappears once school ends.

During the year, everyone more or less knows where they’re supposed to be and when they’re supposed to be there.

Then summer shows up, and suddenly you’re coordinating camps, grandparents’ days, half-days, vacation schedules, and sports practices while still working your full-time job.

This time of year, work and parenting stop staying in their separate lanes.

Kids wander into the background of calls wearing underwear on their heads. You answer emails from ballfield parking lots. Lunch happens at strange times because the entire day drifted off schedule as soon as the alarm went off.

A lot of it feels slightly improvised, even when the calendar says otherwise.

The summer amnesia always gets me because I go into it thinking things are going to feel more relaxed, when in reality it just becomes a different kind of busy. The schedule loosens up, but somehow everything becomes harder to coordinate.

I think working parents put a strange amount of pressure on themselves during the summer. I know I do.

You’re supposed to make it memorable for the kids while also staying fully locked in professionally, and most days it feels like you’re doing a mediocre job at both.

Then you look back later and realize the kids mostly remember the small stuff anyway.

Getting ice cream on a random Tuesday. Running errands together in the middle of the afternoon. Sitting outside late into the evenings because bedtime drifted an hour past where it’s supposed to be.

The schedule feels less controlled this time of year, but maybe that’s part of what makes summer feel different in the first place.

I guess that was a long-winded way of saying we’ll figure it out. We always do.