Holding Onto Summer

Summer is my favorite time of the year. I love everything about it—the heat, the long sunny days, and the lack of routine.

This summer we didn’t plan much for our teens, and that only enhanced the time off. It was a season of freedom—no bedtimes and no early mornings. It was glorious.

And we had fun. This summer our neighbor Kathy joined a pool, and she said we were welcome to come as her guests.

We have gone a few times in the past few weeks, and it has been a treat. It turns out many pool-goers are tired of the pool by August. A few nights ago, we went with Kathy, and my son and his friend found they had the whole pool to themselves.

Over and over, they plunged off the diving board into the pool. They would swim to the side, climb out, shake the water out of their hair, and dive in again. They might still be diving if the pool hadn’t closed.

We just don’t want to see the summer fun end.

I tell my husband that I worry about transitions for our children. I want to ease them into change, guiding them over the threshold to a new experience, a new school, or a new opportunity. But if I’m being honest, they usually go running toward change. It’s their mother who struggles with the transitions.

This year, this season has been ripe with change.

As our children are starting a new school year—and one starts high school—one of my colleagues is moving on to a new role within our university. She and I have worked together for almost 11 years, and I am happy that she is taking this new step—a great one for her. I am also sad to see this era come to a close—even though I know what will be next will also be wonderful.

Change is part of life, but I wish I could hold onto the now—and not just the pool visits and the snowballs and no homework in sight.

Still, I know that change must happen. And here we go.

“To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often,” said Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman.

But here it comes. Let’s move towards perfection. School started last week, and we went today to buy school supplies. As we climbed back into the car to head home, my younger son said, “We should go for snowballs.”

So, we did, stopping for snowballs together for the first—and likely last—time this summer.

We sat on the picnic bench, enjoying our sweet summer treats. The boys were eating tiger’s blood snowballs, there was a breeze blowing, and Darius Rucker’s voice was singing “Wagon Wheel” from a speaker at the snowball stand. I sat and breathed in the perfect summer moment.

Tomorrow will be something else. And we must say goodbye to this beautiful season.

But thank you, God, for now.

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