A Farewell to Summer

Summer is coming to an end. It’s getting darker earlier. The air has changed. The “end of summer” bugs are out. It’s an obvious shift.  My kid go back to school next week and while part of me is jumping for joy inside and out the other part of me is desperately trying to hold onto these last days of summer with them.

I’ve spent a little over two months with my kids at this point. To be clear I have spent 7 days a week, 24 hours a day (minus the 8 hours they sleep if I’m lucky) and countless minutes and seconds with my sweet, adorable (sense my sarcasm) boys this summer. The other day I couldn’t help but think to myself “Okay toughen up pansy. You only have two weeks left. YOU CAN DO THIS!” If I’m being honest, which I am, my kids are pretty awesome but they are also pretty annoying. Between all the bickering amongst each other and the constant whining and begging for snacks a mom can only stay calm and normal for so long. That being said summer with kids is like that guy you loved to hate.  You know it’s not going to be easy but you love it just the same.

Now that the end is near I am having mixed emotions about it actually ending.  It dawned on me the other day as I repeated myself for the 5^th time that it was time for us to leave the beach, that this is the last summer they will be this age. I know every summer is the last summer my kids will be “this age” but it really hit me this time. Next summer I will no longer have a six year old who starts the summer off just ending kindergarten and ends the summer confident and ready to enter into the first grade. Next summer I will no longer have a three year old who just ended his first year in preschool and is eager to begin his second year in the “big classroom”.  I will have two boys a year older, a year wiser and a whole year changed from who they are this year.  It hit me that summer is like childhood, ever fleeting.  This has been a great summer. A summer filled with memories with family and friends. It’s been a summer filled with beginnings and endings and I think it’s only appropriate to say farewell.

A Farewell to summer,

It’s so hard to say goodbye to a season I love so much. It’s hard to say goodbye to the smell of barbeque grills from near and far. It’s hard to explain how much I will miss the sounds of kids riding bikes, catching fireflies, making S’mores and running through the neighborhood yards. I will miss the lack of a schedule. I will miss sitting down with my kids for a relaxed breakfast that consisted of them throwing food, me telling them to stop and all of us somehow laughing despite the chaos. I will miss the days we spend down at our lake. I will miss the 5,006 times they asked me for a snack and the 4,998 times I actually said no.

I will miss the times they were able to spend with their cousins swimming and laughing because I know how much I loved that time as a kid.

 

I will miss not having to worry about bedtime but instead allowing them to catch just one more fish, or make just one more S’more, or catch just one more firefly.

I will miss it all. So I say goodbye to one of my favorite seasons. I say goodbye to summer. Next year I will once again greet you with open arms. I will have two boys who are a year older than they are now and I know we will make great memories like we did this year. I’m never ready to let you go but I am always ready to see what you have in store for me next year.

I’m not dumb enough to think that all ideas of joy should be based on summer but I am smart enough to know that every idea of summer should be based on joy.

 

Is This Song Over Yet?

I often find myself day dreaming about what it would be like to live some place where the weather is always nice. You know some place where it’s always sunny and 70. I can name a few places that come to mind but when push comes to shove I actually happen to be one of those people who enjoy the change of seasons. Call it climate ADD if you will but I find that at the end of one season I am always more than ready for the next one. That being said I have my least favorite and my favorite seasons like everyone.  I don’t know what it is about winter it just seems to be longer than any other season, even though it actually is the same length as all the other seasons. It seems to drag on and on and on and on and on.

Winter is the Stairway To Heaven of all the seasons. What does that mean you ask? Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin…it’s a good song, don’t get me wrong but it is 8 minutes and 1 second long, that’s right 8 MINUTES AND 1 SECOND LONG! Somehow when I was in the 7^th grade they played this at every single dance and I would infamously get stuck dancing with someone I found to be nothing short of revolting and this song went on for 8 MINUTES and 1 SECOND! This sums up how I feel about winter right now. It always starts out fine. I love the holidays, and the first snow. I love getting the kids out on the ice for the first time and feeling like we are participating in the next Norman Rockwell painting. I love that my oldest goes skiing with my husband and they get one on one daddy/son bonding time, but come March I am over it, ALL OF IT!

I’ve had enough of the snow, enough of the sweaters, the hot chocolate, the baking and eating what we baked until my ass no longer wants to get into my jeans season.  I’m sick of warming up the car just to drive my son to preschool. I’m sick of sweating in said warm car because I just wrestled two monkeys’ kids into 18 layers of winter wear. I’m sick of wiping running noses and filling humidifiers at night for said runny noses. 

That being said I actually feel bad for spring. I don’t really like it. I know, I can hear the gasps but to me it’s rainy, muddy, sometimes still cold and just not good enough. It’s much like the song that would follow Stairway to Heaven. No one was staying on the dance floor after being stuck there for an entire 8 minutes and 1 second so the floor would clear, kids would grab soda’s make a trip to the bathroom or just sit down no matter how good the song was. That is how I feel about spring. The winter is so long that when spring shows up I kind of go ugh I JUST WANT WARM SUNNY WEATHER this isn’t good enough!

Summer, now there’s a season I can get on board with. It’s the Livin’ On A Prayer (Bon Jovi) of seasons. Like it or not, this song is one that get's people singing.  Everyone is back up and out on the dance floor screaming out the lyrics at the top of their lungs, or you know kids are out on bikes, people are working in their yards, going for runs at dusk, sharing a cocktail with a neighbor because you all just happened to be outside. It’s the go to season.

We just had another snow storm on what is basically the last 2 minutes of Stairway to Heaven since spring technically starts tomorrow. I’m ready to go get my soda margarita, mingle a little and prep myself because I am waiting anxiously in the wings waiting to hear the start of Livin’ On a Prayer and it’s then that I will know the dance is getting started!

“One must maintain a little bittle of summer, even in the middle of winter.”
― Henry David Thoreau