It’s Still Time For Sunscreen

For most of the country, sunscreen has been stashed away with the beach towels and sand shovels. But in the South and West, where actually the largest percentage of the country live…sunscreen is still a concern.

In our house we go through sunscreen like water. I buy it carefully at the start of the year, checking to ensure it is organic and zinc oxide based. This turns out to be important. Commercial sunscreens are notorious for containing all sorts of scary chemicals. You can read more about that in the learn section, here. So, I try to be careful.

It’s exactly this time of year though, as summer has faded to fall and winter is not yet here, that I forget about sunscreen. Cool mornings with fog tend to lead the mind toward sweaters, not sunscreen. So I often forget to apply it before my son leaves for school.

And he returns red-faced in the afternoon, at which point I have the usual parental guilt. We all know by now that excessive sunburns in the early years can lead to cancer later in life. That thought however, unfortunately doesn’t always mean I remember.

So, I’ve taken to buying a second tube to put in his backpack. He is an unusually responsible child. This of course makes up for his mother’s shortcomings!