Another transition

"Summer" -- the summer that is defined as the young folks being out of school, having a more relaxed or flexible schedule, having Daughter home from college, having Younger Son at camp, having friends of both here at late hours, making road trips to baseball games -- ends early around here.

Today Daughter and I load up (and when I say "load" I mean it literally in every sense) and move her back to school, with Rush preparations, then Rush itself, being imminent, then classes starting in a couple of weeks. She will be moving into a brand new dorm this year, one of those apartment-like facilities that I would have gawked at back in the 70s when I moved into a cinder-blocked cell my first year of higher learning. We have our move-in instructions for tomorrow morning and any prayers for patience and understanding on my part are most appreciated.

Younger Son is in his second week of football two-a-days and he starts back to school a week from Thursday. Our supposedly wiser-than-the-parents school officials here believe we need to get an early start, have a break in the fall and finish first semester before Christmas. They have tried, unsuccessfully to push a "balanced calendar," a/k/a year-round school, on us but we have, thankfully, fought them off. Starting mid-August is bad enough and we traditionalists still enjoy the aforementioned rites of summer days and nights.

Wife and I have learned to flex. In the past several years we have gone from having three offspring at home, to two, to one, back to two, back to one . . . I've lost track. Suffice it to say we do a mental headcount every morning and we go with the flow. The doors revolve well and we try to do the same, enjoying whomever, whenever, and trying to keep some semblance of order at the same time, a feat that is never fully achieved. As a mild anal retentive and early-onset curmedgeon, I have to go out on the back porch and take the occasional cleansing breath.

I told Wife recently that I have this idea in my head that I really can slow things down if I try. "Maybe if I sit still for part of every day and just think about things . . . "

She suggested maybe I try a little harder to make the most of moments while they are here, a suggestion full of hidden meaning for me to ponder and a suggestion just chock full of wisdom, as her statements so often are.