Where Has All the Summer Gone?

The summer is winding down. One more week to do all those things that have been put off. Or, one week to prepare for what is to come.

My youngest is sleeping in a tent out back with thee of his eleven-year-old friends. A very belated birthday party. Then again, he couldn’t be sleeping out if it were December. Last night the yard was littered with pop cans and bodies slain with dollar store foam swords, later to be resurrected into Ninjas or doomed to be Zombies.

Friday we will move our oldest into his dorm. All six of us. Our loaded down van with his brother and sisters will descend upon Mount Union College and move John-Boy into this next phase of life.

The girls are ready to go back to school, to be amongst their friends. But, as happens every year, the cry of ‘where did the summer go?’ echoes with the cicadas. We never made time for those camping trips I’d planned back in May. To go to Kennywood, Lake Erie or even the zoo. So much time spent doing – what? Reading. The kids do spend a great deal of summer time reading. Swimming, though never often enough for my ten-year-old. But too much sitting. At the TV, at the computer. Is it the schedule that creates these void zones? The minutes stuck in-between baseball, play practice, marching band, jobs, church and all the other things that fill pieces of the days?

Will I ever learn to manage those moments effectively? To not be in perpetual limbo? Perhaps, and then again, perhaps not.

Regardless, summer ends this week. Oh, we have the reprieve of Labor Day weekend. Those three days to do at least one of the things you’ve been meaning to do all summer. We really have to get our heads together and decide what it will be.