How to Say Goodbye to Summer (without meaning it)

Sometimes it’s annoying that I can’t stop documenting absolutely everything, but what else does a sentimental mother armed with a smart phone do?

The overflowing icloud is saying: Here was the heat and the wanting and the cold, cold lemonade. Here were our messes, our small triumphs, our tears. Summer itself is a collection-of moments both magical and exhausting, of accumulating sand and legos. It’s not that I can’t live without these moments until next year. It’s that I can’t live without the memory of them.

I would wish my kids to stay this age forever, if it didn’t make me feel like a beloved car on the way to the salvage yard.

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What is more cliche than saying I wish summer would never end? And yet, in the myth version of my life, maybe it wouldn’t. Summer is my soul as a season. It almost feels holy, as if it should always be capitalized, an absolute heroine of a season. The days seem to ring with a new kind of freedom. Could I be a different version of myself? Could we all melt into our moments a little more?

We lived in so many different shades this summer.

I have i-note entries titled: “How to Get in a Fight on the Way to a Colonoscopy”, I have photo albums titled: “SALADITA”, “HOME REMODEL”, “COSTA’S 5th BIRTHDAY”…

If I hear chatter about shortening summer in the name of academics or structure, I always think of all the important lessons we learn in the interim. The ones I am much more confident in than math.

“Trad Wife” things like: Keeping house, cooking, gardening, swimming, home decorating, mailing a letter, time management, water safety, animal awareness…

I’m not quite ready for it to end, and yet I’m here. The kids are back in school, save for my last baby who will start in January. The beds are made, the bookshelves are tidy. I can still hear the kids playing Simon Says, discussing if Leprechauns are listening to us year-round and the sound of metal matchbox cars raining down from the top bunk onto the wood floor.

Oh, to have them here! I revel in the joy and burden of being my children’s main influence. And they are mine.