I spent last week at the cabin slathering myself and my kids in sunscreen as if it was my job (it actually is). This time of year, I seem to read an article every week in which I am reminded that “there is no safe amount of sun exposure.” It is not, they tell me, even safe to slowly get a tan, and every time you burn your chance of getting skin cancer ticks up a notch. So I have dutifully purchased fresh sunscreen, long sleeve rash guards, and hats. I gave myself a pep talk re: sun protection protocols way back in June. This year will be different! This year we will do better!

Instead, we’ve all returned home with beautiful tans that would have made many teenage girls envious back in 1993. I am frustrated, feeling like I’ve done all that I possibly can to avoid sun exposure and still it’s not enough.

I’m not sure why I’m bothering to try to protect my own forty-year-old skin at this late stage in the game. I’ve already got some serious sun damage: brown spots on my forehead that never go away, a permanent farmer’s tan of pink freckles on my arms. I’m sure there’s some bullshit happening on the back of my shoulders that I can’t quite see.

Strategizing about ways to avoid sun exposure in the future got me thinking about my sun exposure in the past, and how I got here.

I grew up in a very sunny part of the world. We lived maybe a mile and a half from a gorgeous lake filled with clear blue glacier water. My mom would take us swimming almost every afternoon in the summer. We did have sunscreen and I do remember using it from time to time, but it was the 90s and we mostly swam in the late afternoons and didn’t need it. I don’t remember burning a lot as a kid, but I do remember getting very, very tan every summer. I look ridiculous in some of my childhood pictures with my dark brown skin and bright blonde sun-bleached hair.

We spent a lot of time in the sun with our dad as well. Dad owned a boat, Dad loved his boat, and we all spent a lot of time on that boat. With the sun bright above us and the water reflecting from below it was a good thing we already had those base tans! And if we weren’t on the boat, we were probably camping at one of the lakeside campgrounds, eating pop-tarts in the morning sun, swimming in the mid-day sun, jumping from rock to rock on the shoreline in the afternoon sun. I recall my father putting 90 SPF sunscreen on his own nose once or twice. I do not recall him ever putting sunscreen on us, but I think he must have from time to time.

One week of the summer we would always be away from the lake at Grandma and Grandpa’s farm. It was a little less sunny there, but we made up for it by spending almost the entire day outside biking up and down their long gravel driveway or pretending to be varmints in the field. I don’t believe my grandparents even owned sunscreen. They certainly never put any on us.

Childhood summers gave way to college summers, and I spent three of those college summers in Greece working on an archaeological dig. We all used sunscreen and hats, but we also all burned at least once per season (I think it was impossible not to). I swam in the Mediterranean every afternoon with the sun shining on my back. I hiked up Acrocorinth with the sun beating down on my arms, and I touched the massive column blocks of the Temple of Zeus in Olympia with the sun beating down on my hands.

Not too many years later my husband and I took an epic honeymoon trip through the national parks of the West. We climbed five miles up to Grinnell Glacier on a beautiful sunny day and stood at the edge of the eerie blue glacier water with September UV rays reflecting right back up into our faces. We drove through Arches National Park with the sun screaming down on us through the windshield. We stopped at a small cheese factory in California and sat in the parking lot eating fresh cheese while the sun beat down on us.

When I examine my sun damage in the mirror and start to consider everything that has led to it, I get angry. Not angry at myself for not being better about sun protection (although I certainly could have been better), but angry at the dermatologists of the world who continue to insist that “there is no safe level of sun exposure.”

Sun exposure is the small thread that binds together this patchwork of active, outdoors-based memories that make up my childhood and my young adult years. My life would have been very different if I had spent the first forty years of it trying to avoid the sun. I would have missed out on a lot of memories with my grandparents, siblings, parents, friends, husband, and now my children.

“There is no safe level of sun exposure” just doesn’t work for me. I want a more reasonable statement from the American Academy of Dermatology. “Try to avoid sun exposure as much as you can without interfering with your outdoor activities” would be a good start. I would like “It’s actually okay to get a little bit tan if it happens accidentally, just really try to not burn” even more.

I think these more reasonable statements would be helpful not just for me, but for other parents who are trying their best and still coming up short. It might be good for the dad who wants to take his kids camping but is overwhelmed by the prospect of reapplying sunscreen to his hyperactive toddler sixteen times. They might be helpful for the mom who wants to let the tweens go to the pool but just can’t stand having to fight over the long sleeve rash guard again.

I don’t think the recommendations are going to change the way I want them to, so I have had to make some personal decisions about what I am and am not willing to do to protect us from the sun.

I am not willing to keep my kids inside at the cabin, even during the hottest/brightest part of the day. I am not willing to stand in the shade much at all. I’m not going to limit my swimming time, or their tubing time. I’m not going to mow the lawn at 6 AM.

I am willing to wear sunscreen every time we go outside, and to reapply every two hours (or so). Sometimes we will wear long sleeve rash guards and sometimes we will wear hats. But sometimes we won’t, and I will still sit at the end of the dock with my feet in the water, a book in one hand, and a beer in the other, and the sun beating down on my back.

If you are willing and able to do better at this than me, then good for you. Your skin is going to look great, and you probably won’t get skin cancer and I am envious of both of those things while also fully admitting that I was unwilling to put in the effort for the same reward.

“Her skin was such a wreck,” my gravestone will read. “And she had so much skin cancer, but she didn’t regret standing in the sunny huckleberry field for hours with her grandmother. Also she really liked cheese and beer so that’s three health strikes against her and probably how she ended up here if we’re being honest about the whole situation.”

I just hope my kids will forgive me for all the sun damage that will pepper their foreheads someday, and all the great memories that came with it.