Pater Familias … because I'm your FATHER!

Where Does Summer Go?

July 1, 2010

You shocked, too, that the Fourth is upon us?

Dad Sees End That Child Cannot Imagine

I blame the Unsuburb’s school system, which kept our little geniuses in class until a week ago today – long after kids of friends elsewhere were out and driving their parents crazy.

Dismissal practically at the end of June gave us exactly one full week of summer vacation until the long Independence Day weekend, causing date-shock and cold anxiety about where summer went before it actually went anywhere.  

Way I remember, the Fourth of July sat out in a vastness of summer vacation, like Bermuda in the Atlantic, with both season’s beginning and end many days over the horizon. And in all those days, nothing to do but goof around the way we kids saw fit. By the Fourth the summer dream was heavy on us, with no hint that we were ever awake or of waking up. Even the days themselves seemed endless. 

But then maybe it isn’t the school system’s fault. Summer vacation is endless only for kids, not grownups who have lost the gift of forever. I’m not so sure what it looks like to kids like our Girl Child, whose structured, supervised hours at YMCA Day Camp actually run longer than her school days. Week after next, what with some special six o’clock sessions at the Genoa Academy of Classical Ballet, she’ll be tied up for 11 hours, three days running. This is not to mention summer reading and word drills we committed to (per Teacher’s recommendation), so she'll come on stronger in Language Arts next year.

Being seven is not what it used to be, particularly for the victims of ambitious parenting. 

On the other hand, summer is summer, and the dream is upon our Girl Child. Not a week in, the sun has bleached her hair and toasted her to glowing gold, which I love to see because it means she’s out all day, running around with other kids, swimming two long sessions at her camp, one more here if she can talk me into taking her to the town pool. All she wants to talk about is how she’s swimming with big kids out in the deep water of the lake and maybe she’ll get into the Cannonball Club, whatever that is.

Today, the weekly silly day, she was supposed to go to camp with a red nose. Minerva did the color with lipstick.

Could be the scheduling is more serious for us, the people who set this stuff up and send in the checks, than for the kids. Maybe goofing around, albeit professionally organized and supervised, is still just that. 

I hope so.

The other day, Girl Child said to me, all dreamy and deep in her head, “Summer seems like the longest season.”

Daughter Mine, I hope it is. 

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