Summer is Over

Oh, September, could you not have waited a few more weeks? We've enjoyed a good run this summer. Now we're trading in pools and bathing suits for pencils and backpacks. It doesn't seem fair.

We've been trying to squeeze whatever life remains from summer break. Last Saturday we met Pete, Elisabeth, Tai and Ada in Boston for the Boston Arts Festival, which took over Christopher Columbus Park. It was a good excuse to get in town and kill a few hours on another perfect summer day. Had I not had three kids in tow, I probably would have spent some time looking through the small galleries that had popped up all around the Waterfront (there seemed to be hundreds of photographers, woodworkers, jewelry makers, and other artists selling their wares), but we basically ignored all of them in favor of the children's art area, which offered activities for the little ones to do and nothing for the parents to buy. Perfect.

Lucia quickly found an activity that interested her: painting. Cups of paint and four large panels of picket fencing were laid out on the grass, giant wooden canvasses for future artists to explore color and shape. What a good idea this was. Simple genius. Lucia looked like an artist in residence, loading her brush up with paint, depositing it in long strokes on the fence, and then reviewing her work before doing it again.

Lucia as Tom Sawyer.

Hoops!

Celia enjoyed water calligraphy.

What a nice afternoon. Nowhere to be, surrounded by art in the city. We brought the kids to a playground and ate dinner overlooking the harbor.

Labor day came and went, and yesterday we bid summer a sad adieu with the return of school.

Andres has not exactly been looking forward to this day. Over the past month, he's become mopey whenever the subject of school comes up. "I don't like school," he says. "We have to sit there all day." He's right about that last part, sadly. And my attempts to remind him that he goes to school with all of his good friends have been met with increasingly exasperated sighs. He knows that, of course. He just wants to hang out with them on the soccer field and in the backyard like he's been doing all summer.

He arrived at school wearing a nice shirt (yay) but in desperate need of a haircut (ugh, my fault). And though he was happy to see all of his friends, he was also quick with an expressive "boo!" when I asked him how it felt to be back. This was partly for show, I'm sure. But it worries me a bit too.

Andres telling everyone (including his buddy Rory) how he really feels about school.

We found his classroom, and his bluster was replaced by the same shyness that characterized his first days as a preschooler, kindergartner, and first grader. A tepid shake of his new teacher's hand, a quiet "hi." Then the search for his cubby, his jacket hook, and finally his seat. No matter what Andres thought about school, it was surely dawning on him this was going to be his home away from home this year. And next year. And the year after that. I took a picture, gave him a hug, and left.

Maybe second grade isn't all bad.

Today, though, perhaps a sign that the ice is thawing. I parked and walked him up to the front of the school, ready to repeat the same routine as yesterday. His face lit up when he saw that Varun, his good second grade friend and fellow soccer star, was also walking up. The two of them came together like magnets and darted in the front doors and up the stairs to class. I followed, but was swallowed up in a sea of parents and kids also climbing the stairs. They were far ahead. When I finally made it up, Andres had already made it into class and was putting his backpack away. It's like he had been doing it for years. Which, I guess, he has.

Summer is a special season. But it's over now, and we are all getting back into the swing of old routines--homework, prepping lunches, pick up and drop off. We have three seasons standing between us and more summer bliss. It feels like forever, but it will come again.