21 Days of Summer

Like most, I loved summer as a kid. Not because I didn't like school - I did. So much so that I set up a "school" for my younger brother and sister in the home office every summer, forced the poor kids to sit down and open their workbooks to section one. I was a (huge) dork. See exhibit A. Really, it takes a whole blog post to explain. I won't.

Exhibit A. Me on the right. Hopes were not high, my friends.

But this year I had 21 days of summer. 21 days to cram in all the beach days with friends, date nights, reading, event planning, packing, birthdays, Model T rides, morning runs and family dinners that I possibly could before my time is no longer my own. There's a whole collection of adjectives that I could slap on these next two days of transition. Among them would be "excited" and "anxious" and "hopeful" and "expectant" and the ever-present "teary"that usually seems overdramatic after the fact.

I'd be lying if I said I were ready for summer to be over.

Because this summer feels more like waving goodbye from an accelerating car than a brief escape from an academic life.

Which is fine, and good, and necessary to life as an independent adult. I still feel like I'm missing something - I threw out the memo on the brevity of childish freedom, I ignored the phone calls that would tell me how many months, days, hours I had before real life would begin.

We never fully know where the future is going to take us, and usually that's okay. It only becomes intimidatingly real when we're at the edge of it, looking over into a life that bears so few traces of the past. And here I am, toeing the border between self and abyss, hoping that the journey is as beautiful and enlightening as it was promised to me when still a dorky, awkward child.

These 21 days were awfully good to me. They returned me to the fleeting experiences of childhood that tell me, in their quiet way, how lovely and precious and purposeful our lives truly are.

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