But here’s how my summer really unfolded.

On the first day of July, we found a winged rodent in our daughter’s bedroom, which led us to discover a colony of bats in a crawl space on our third floor. Suddenly, instead of baking a flag cake, I was learning new words like “guano” and “histoplasmosis.” The experts were adamant: We needed rabies shots — a total of 38 for the family, spread out over 14 days. The cost of bat remediation and emergency room co-pays added up to the price of the Lenox rental, which my husband finally nixed. (He’d been skeptical about squeezing five people into a glorified shed, even one with biodegradable bamboo countertops.)

When we found out about the bats, our oldest was on a two-week biking and camping trip in New England and our younger two kids were visiting grandparents in Ohio. My husband painstakingly mapped out hospital visits from Cleveland to Truro to Martha’s Vineyard. Late one night, while the oldest awaited her first four shots in an emergency room on the Cape, she borrowed her trip leader’s phone to call home. She’d biked 30 miles that day, but her voice never wavered: “Guess what? We’re going whale watching tomorrow!”

I glanced at the clock and realized it was after midnight; tomorrow had already arrived. I admired my daughter’s gumption; to her, the rabies shots were just part of the adventure.

When we reunited in New Jersey, the kids seemed fine. Actually, they were better than fine. My son helped his grandmother pick out a new Buick and our older daughter learned how to pitch a tent. Not to be outdone, our youngest presented her hospital bracelets with the pride a luckier girl might have had for a Six Flags ticket stub commemorating her first run on a roller coaster. I told the kids I’d cried when I thought of them getting shots without me, and our son said: “Actually? Meeting doctors who might have treated LeBron James was the highlight of my basketball career. No doubt.” (This boy has not seen “Trainwreck,” nor will he.)

From rabies shots, we moved into the day camp portion of summer, with all three kids enrolled in programs with different start times and emergency forms. Occasionally, I forgot to pack sunblock. Once, I dispatched our babysitter to pick up an hour late. I was in a meeting when the camp called. A teenager trilled into the phone: “We’ll hang on to her until someone arrives! And just a reminder? We’re a peanut-free facility.” I pictured my youngest sitting on a hot curb, backpack empty except for her verboten sandwich. I had a knot in my stomach for the rest of the afternoon, but it turned out she loved overhearing her counselors’ “unappropriate” language.