Farewell to a beautiful summer

Summer is coming to a close, and the school year is beginning.

Every year, I think maybe by the time August rolls around, I’ll be excited for school to start again. But summer is my favorite. I love the heat, the lack of a school schedule, the lunches that don’t need to be packed. I want the world to gently grind to a halt in July. We could use a few more days…even weeks.

But summer insists on flying by, and here we are hurtling toward fall.

I’ve always dreamed of giving our children a summer with the freedom that I had as a child. I remember those days as being wild and free. When we were young, we would run out of the house in the morning and only come back inside for food or band-aids or to pry a sibling away from their book to join a kickball game outside.

By the time we were teenagers, we might walk to the mall or hop a bus to go to the harbor. Our parents knew where we were most of the time…or some of the time. There were no cell phones, and it all worked out. It was a time of discovery and a first real taste of independence.

This year might be the closest we’ve come to that, as our younger son persuaded us to join a pool for the first time. At 15, he’s old enough to go on his own, so many days he’s spent the day at the pool with a friend—or two or three. It’s been such a marvelous addition to the season, and I wish it would last just a little longer.

But here comes fall. The days are shorter, the nights are darker, and the beautiful warmth of a steamy summer day seems like a distant memory. Here we are, heading into another school year. I’m grateful for all of it. School brings its own magic. But it comes with much more structure and the precarious balancing act of classes and extracurriculars.

Suddenly, I realize our children are another year older, another year closer to adulthood. Time is slipping through my fingers as we rocket through high school toward college.

I wish we could hold onto this time just a little bit longer. But, of course, it is the changing of the seasons and the passing of time that is the only aspect of life that doesn’t change. And the speed of time passing just highlights how much we should treasure the days we are given.

“To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often,” St. John Henry Newman told us.

So, we close the book on summer, head rapidly toward fall, and try to embrace the change for the gift it is.

Still, before we hand the reins over to pumpkin spice, we can squeeze in a few more nights at the pool and one last snowball—perhaps with marshmallow topping.

Thank you, God, for summer. Please give us what we need to be ready for this next season in life.

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