Summertime

When I was young, I was always surprised about my mom’s reasons for wishing summer was over. Of course, as a kid, summer was the best time ever. Months of absolutely nothing to do except play. Which, of course, we did consistently, and never, ever got bored…

Actually, the words, “I’m bored” were outlawed in my house when I was growing up. It was a transgression on par with throwing balls in the house. If we ever dared to say the illegal words, we would be given something to do. Which was generally cleaning our room, or helping with dinner, or some other activity that every kid LOVES doing. This, of course, was meant to teach us to use our imagination. To teach us that if we’re bored, we have to figure out something to do on our own. A lesson that we learned so well that it was at least another couple of hours before we were again complaining of boredom.

Which makes it all the more surprising that my mom looked forward to the end of summer, not because she was sick of us kids (though she was), or because of the heat (though she hates that), but because it meant things would slow down.

And as I child, I thought, “Slow down?! How could anything get slower than summertime?!”

But now I’m an adult. My weekends are booked until mid-August. I have something planned every night for the next two and a half weeks. I’m so tired from lack of sleep that I’m liable to doze off at any given moment. Summer means fireworks and barbeques and hiking and going to the park and swimming and playing in sprinklers and camping and yard work and road trips and babysitting kids for others going on vacation and outdoor birthday parties and so much more.

And even though all of those things are very fun, and I look forward to them, and summer is still my favorite season by far, I now understand what my mom was saying. Fall is something to look forward to, because it’s a time of recovery from all the fun we had during the summer. A time when my schedule once more settles down (and tends to revolve around the newest episode of whatever TV shows I happen to be addicted to). A time when I actually have days with nothing planned. A time when I can catch up on my reading and I have time to visit the bookstore.

Ah…the bookstore.

But for now, I have too much to do to think about that. Bring on the babysitting and the road trips and the campouts, cause summer is halfway over and I’m running out of time to cram it all in!