Back to School Blues

This is the face of a depressed dog. 

It's the face that Riley wears every day while the kids are at school.   Today was my youngest's first day of fourth grade, and the start of the back to school blues for Riley - and for me.  Riley knows that this means that the days of doorbell ringing, kids yelling, skateboards rolling through the house, and loud messy summer activity are coming to a close.    There will be long, quiet days broken only by the whir of the sewing machine, or the vaccuum cleaner, or the tapping on the computer keyboard.    The back door won't slam all day long, and the refrigerator door won't stand open with children standing in front of it waiting for something to magically appear.   And on rainy days, there won't be anyone to lay on the floor, leaning against sleeping Riley's belly while watching tv.

I understand that face, and that feeling.  This is the time of year when amidst all of the activity of school preparations, I  analyze the summer.  Did we do enough?  Did we have enough downtime?  Did we savor every bit of summer?  Did we wring out every last bit of  summer,  not squandering any of it?  And the answer is always a little bit bittersweet.  We did what we could. 

We played.  We slept in.  We visited family.  We took road trips.  We vacationed - and we read, and water-skied, and swam, and flew on the trapeze.  Well, some of us flew on the trapeze.  We grilled out.  We made cobbler and ate it with ice cream.  We played cards.  We went to camp.  We grew and we changed. 

So now, summer's coming to an end.  I love fall and everything that comes with it, and I'll post about that soon.  But first, I have to pay homage to the season that's ending.  I need to mourn the passing of one more summer in the limited number of summers that I have with all three children at home, one more reminder that time flies.   There are lots of pictures documenting the moments that made up our summer - the big ones, and the small ones; and while there may have been a few things we left undone,  we did what we could. 

And it was pretty darn good. 

Comments

[Doojie]

You say potatoe, I say potato. We had a great summer but I was so ready for some alone time. I justified my glee by saying that summer can't be so sweet if it weren't limited. Matt really did have the best summer of his life, that's what counts.