Endless Summer

Man, I love summer. 

Everyone loves summer, but having grown up with parents who were teachers, summer was even more meaningful in terms of defining our overall life calendars. 

My life was centered around summer for the 18 years I lived at home, the 4 years I went to college, and the 3 years I worked as a teacher.  It honestly barely occurred to me that there were people who had to work during the summer, until I got a job in the corporate world and became one of those sad people languishing under florescent lights and blasted air conditioning all summer long. 

Those corporate years were not my best summers.  But even in the days of sweating buckets during my walk to the train station in humid August, I could appreciate summer for what it wasn't: namely, winter.  No shoveling snow.  No lost gloves.  No Seasonal Affective Disorder. 

And summer becomes infinitely more important once you have a child. Parents in warmer climates may not realize this, but being cooped up indoors all winter with a baby or small child is not great for your mental health.  You long for the days when you can just pop out your back door for a walk.  A walk ... is that too much to ask?! 

Then when the child becomes a toddler, the battle of the coats begins, and you find yourself on a gray January day, fantasizing about July when you can just pop a pair of sandals on your kid and head out the door. 

So longed for is summer, that it is no surprise that it feels like it takes summer forever to get here.  When it's May 1 and you're still wearing your winter coat, you doubt summer will ever come, and your doubts are only intensified when you're freezing your ass off Memorial Day weekend on the opening day of the pool. 

And then summer finally arrives, and you get this feeling like you must soak up every last second of it. 

We must go to the pool every afternoon!  We must go to the park, the zoo, the splash pad, and the amusement park ... at least twice!  Never mind that you're tired!  No, you can't stay in and watch TV!  You can do that in January!

This excessive use of exclamation points is making me exhausted. 

And that, my friends, is my sad admission:

I'm tired of summer. 

I know, I know, I know.  I just went through a paragraphs-long explanation of why summer is just the greatest season ever.  How could I be tired of it? 

Believe me, I'm as surprised as anybody by this development.  I never expected to ever wish summer would end.  In fact, so worried was I about the fleeting summer, that the week before Memorial Day I had a dream ... nay, nightmare ... that it was already Labor Day and the whole summer was over. 

But now I find myself asking, When will Labor Day get here? 

Part of this desire to move onto the next season has to do with my personal need to compartmentalize periods of time.  Summer is summer, and fall is fall, and this late August part feels kind of neither here nor there.  I mean, technically it is still summer, but the camps are all over, the pool has reduced hours, and the school supplies at Target are all picked through.  The local public schools start back tomorrow, although we have to wait until after Labor Day for Nathan's preschool to start, and I imagine we'll feel even more in limbo during the next two weeks.

I'm also not one for last hurrahs.  They feel like trying to squeeze one last product out of a bygone age, even though in your mind you have moved onto the next age. 

Case in point: The Raging Waters pencil. 

See, sometime in late August of 1989, my mom decided to take my brothers and me to Raging Waters waterpark, as one last summer hurrah before school started.  I was starting middle school in the fall, so that year felt like a really big deal.  Toward the end of the waterpark trip, my mom ducked into the gift shop and bought us each a souvenir pencil, so that we could think of our fun summer outing every time we did our schoolwork with that pencil. 

Well, sorry to sound ungrateful, Mom, but I hated that pencil.  I refused to write with it at school.  (And since young Shannon always carried a minimum of 12 sharpened pencils in her pencil case, I never had to use that one particular pencil.)  Every time I'd look at that pencil I would tear up--yes, literally cry--thinking about how that pencil didn't belong. 

Several years later, in the fall of 1996, I was preparing to head off to college.  The fact that my college was on the quarter system and started a full month later than my high school friends' colleges felt, again, very limbo-ish.  Not to mention I was a blubbering mess, to the point that I am still eternally grateful that my family is still speaking to me after that summer.  I just needed to get to college and get over the initial shock. 

So, the day before college, as we were running last-minute errands, my mom suggested we pop into Starbucks to get coffee.  And I, literally, asked, "What would be the point?" 

Now, being a mother myself, I realize that the point was that my mom was maybe trying to soak up one last moment with her firstborn before she went away to college.  But, being a mom myself, I also realize that you always step aside and put your child's feelings before your own.  So we didn't go for coffee. 

Again, sorry Mom.  But in my mind, I was already away at college.  I needed to move on.

And that's how I feel right now, in this moment, at the end of August 2011.  It's time to move on. 

Obviously I'm not as dumb and dramatic as I was about the pencil or the coffee, but I do still feel this really strong longing to move on to the next season.  I'm ready for structure and cooler temperatures and pretty leaves during afternoons at the park.  I'm ready for chili and apple-picking and corn mazes. 

Some people might take exception to this wishing away of the present.  It is true that life is short, and we should seize the moment.  It is also true that, while the autumn is glorious, the season after it is much less so, and a wish for fall to hurry up is therefore a wish for the winter to hurry up as well.  It's better to just live in the moment and appreciate today.

But I like to think that there's a hint of optimism, or at the very least, acceptance, in my attitude.  The seasons are going to change anyway, and we might as well accept it.  That fall that seemed nightmarish back in May?  It now feels very, very welcome. 

I dare say it, but I'm actually going to get excited about the first snow of the winter, too.

Because, ultimately, the change of seasons is a comforting rhythm of life.  Some may choose to fight it, but I choose to accept it.