peak summer

The summer schedule feels somehow both free and frenetic. Time is slippery, the days are textured and full in ways that don't make much room for traditional ambition. The weeks come and go in a flurry of cookouts and baseball games and trips to the pool.

The boys watched the state fair's six horse hitch class contest, enjoyed urban farm camp and rowing club, visited arcades and wetlands and special fishing spots. They've recently been conducting kitchen counter science experiments and collecting pet snakes. August now, and I acknowledge some of my summer regret and nostalgia and dread are definite holdovers from my teaching days. I remind myself that the boys will one hundred percent pull more National Geographics in the backyard, that just because summer days are winding down doesn't mean the wonder will cease.