Everyone is registering shock that summer is almost over. According to the buzz, July never showed up--everyone remembers June, the crazy wet month around here but after that it seems that August just showed up on the chance that no one would notice that we got only four days of July. Yeah, everyone agrees, there was an Independence Day. We have vague memories of the town's parade--the little kids riding their decorated bikes, our finest firefighters on their always-clean fire engine making the crowd stick their fingers in their ears to avoid being struck deaf by the siren the driver sets off time after painful time, and the firemen from the town just to the south who bring their rig up to drive down the main drag, too. Those guys cheerfully taunting our townsfolk with insults about the firefighters' willingness to go slumming to lend our parade some class.
And after that, we draw a blank. That's all the July anyone can remember.
Now I suspect that we did have July. There's no way all the mosquito bites itching up and down my arms and legs could have appeared if July hadn't happened. I remember driving west to art classes, I remember a woman who looked just like my mother-in-law being in the house for a while. Jean's shown up for a couple of quick visits, two days every month or so, and there's quite a pile of mail that's grown in the space general neglect left it. The colony of envelopes and magazines reminds me of a petri dish loaded with bacteria that I grew in my sophomore biology class. I couldn't stop the bacteria from populating the agar-agar (or whatever that jello-like stuff was) and I had nothing to do with all that pesky mail either. But I do recall that growing stuff like that takes time.
So I won't demand a re-do of this summer or a recount of long lazy days. It's time to direct efforts towards returning to work and having students go to school. This week I'm getting Nephew equipped for dorm life and urging him to buy some clothes. He'll be competing with a lot of other grubby students for laundry machines. I think of how his life is going to change at the end of August. He's going to be challenged to live life on his own terms; I hope the past year and a half here has given him some experiences that will help him stand strong.
Parker manfully faced summer school and did six hours of math each day, catching up with where he would have been if he'd worked during the regular school year. He's been sad and close to home for about six months now. I don't really see anything that will come and lift him back into happiness, but I hope something will. He's my baby, you know, my baby who towers seven or eight inches taller than I am, my baby who is angry and sad. This is a tough end to my childraising.
Jean will move from her summer digs to her schoolyear apartment three days after Nephew is moved into his dorm. I'm casting about for some help with these driving and lugging chores, but it looks like I'm on the moving crew. She's a sweet daughter still, far from home as she is. She's looked after her mama a bit this year, calling and emailing her care instead of being here to offer it.
As for her mother, she's chasing interests she's been saying she wanted to for years. While weeds overgrow the flowerbeds, I seem to have gotten myself endeavoring to do things that I have ample experience failing at. That's okay. You can't always work on things you can already competently do and expect to grow. At this point, I'm willing to work and fail and learn.
Maybe the reason I have the impression that lazy summer days didn't show up this year is because I was too busy and unlazy to notice them. Even so, I do know they've been pretty amazing.
