School starts in one day, and I think I’m finally ready to say it. (Well, maybe whisper it.) We had a good summer.

This is new, so I’m afraid I might jinx it if I say it out loud. It reminds me of our son’s remote control airplane that he really wants to fly but that he’s so afraid of losing that it stays permanently stowed in the storage room. We nearly lost it on its first flight, and that past experience taught us that failure is part of playing. The bobble of the first flight was traumatizing, and he’s had such a hard time trusting that trying again could yield a different result. The few times we’ve attempted since have gone a little better each time, as he tests ideal conditions and learns how to better control the plane. But more times than not, he plays it safe and opts not to try at all because the risk of a crash is too overwhelming.

Every summer with our kids so far has been tricky. The departure from the consistency and routine of school, from a tightly monitored schedule and rules at home, and from the systems and expectations they find comfort in all school year to the free-for-all that is summer — it’s all a recipe for struggle, which historically has meant losing control and crashing hard.

Struggle, we have. Over the years, the number of calls I’ve taken from work, the camps we’ve been asked to leave, the parties we’ve tearfully marched home from, the public and private battles between brothers, the “vacations” we’ve retreated from disheartened, the early returns home from misadventures — they’ve zapped the joy out of summer over and over.

It’s become a bit of a dirty word in our world – Summer. That makes me sad, but not as sad as the tumult, dashed expectations, and lost dreams of sharing the joys of summer I carry with me from my own childhood.

But this summer, I saw the spark of possibility, despite my best effort to keep expectations low. One week at a time, we marveled at the new milestones: no panicky calls from camp directors; excited banter about new tennis skills; the basketball camp highlights; making a new friend; learning to sew; leading a kayaking safety demonstration; keeping pace with the lead mountain biking instructor; being the most enthusiastic helper.

Every day, the boys and I would tumble through the door in a jumble of backpacks, lunchboxes, wet towels, and keepsakes, and my husband would tentatively whisper to me, “how did it go?” And with a raise of my brows, I would reply something like “apparently good?” As the weeks went on, it would sometimes be “great” or “no report.”

We would breathe a big sigh. And no matter that every single day actually did go well, or great, or passable enough not to get flagged down and unloaded on by camp staffers, we would brace ourselves for the next day, never trusting that this just might be a truly good summer.

The weekend of camping went well? Shhhh, don’t get cocky; there’s another trip on the horizon. That sleepover was a success? Maybe just a fluke. Don’t get overconfident.

And now I realize with one day left that we kind of missed it. We were so busy bracing for impact that we forgot to look out the window and watch the clouds drift by; to soak up the sun and admire it setting as we touched down gently on the ground.

I suppose there’s no navigator on Earth that survived a crash landing (or a hundred, in our case) that doesn’t flash back to it every time they’re airborne. But what a shame to miss out on the magic because we’re bracing for a crash that we may have course corrected to avoid.

My heart feels it. My eyes see it. My ears hear it. My nervous system just hasn’t reset quite yet. The trust hasn’t quite settled deep in my bones, but I’m working on letting it soak in. We made it. We did it.

This good summer…it wasn’t luck. It was hard lessons learned; it was hours upon hours of research; it was advocacy calls and shared 504 plans; it was literal years of deconstructing the crash landings for learnings about ideal conditions and better controls. It was failing forward and making the conscious choice to try again. Now that we’ve worked out the course correction, it’s time to work on softening to trust the magic. No more whispers; no more bracing — we successfully flew through Summer, and it feels so good. Now that we have the skills to land smoothly, I’ll work on my belief that there are blue skies and only the slightest breezes ahead for the seasons to come.