The fleeting summer

Now that all of my kids have graduated, the end of the academic year doesn't mean as much to me as it used to (other than high school sports PA announcing opportunities drying up for a few months).

The only thing I really notice is that my drive to work gets faster in the summer.

I drive past a busy elementary school on weekday mornings. When school is in session, my commute usually coincides with drop-off time, and the line of cars backs up into the street I take to get to the office.

It's not that big a deal, especially because there's a friendly police officer there every morning directing traffic, and he allows those of us not dropping off kids to pull around the line and be on our merry way.

But that's not until we get relatively close to the school driveway. Until that point, I sit in stopped traffic for a few minutes, particularly if the school crossing guard is having a busy morning ferrying kids across the road (which he generally is, given that this school is in a residential neighborhood and features a lot of parents and kids walking to school).

Much like an 8-year-old in June looking forward to a long summer vacation, once school lets out, I get excited about 12 weeks of drop-off line-free driving in the mornings. It feels like I'm going to be zooming to and from work forever.

But before I know it, and way before it feels like it should be happening, the drop-off line is back. Early September rolls around and those same kids, all a little older and now a grade higher, are back out there clogging up the roads in pursuit of an education.

Again, not a burden at all, but it does remind me how fast summers go, especially when you live in a place like Northeast Ohio where cool (or freezing cold) weather is the rule eight months out of the year and sometimes longer.

We so look forward to summers here on America's North Coast (we're the only ones who call the southern shore of Lake Erie that) that once they arrive, we sometimes hang our entire emotional wellbeing on them.

"Please, please, please stay warm and dry. Just for a little while. Please. The snow will come soon enough. Whoever is in charge of the weather, I will pay them $1,000 just for the opportunity to wear flip-flops for a few weeks."

This helps to explain why so many people around here, especially boys in the 12 to 16 age range, start wearing shorts when it's still freezing outside. We're so desperate for warm weather that we'll pretend it's here once the weak, early-spring sun comes out, even if the air temperature tops out at 40 degrees.

All of this is to point out what you already know: (A) It's July 25th. Somehow. (B) It's still summer, but kids start going back to school in just a few weeks. (C) Nothing good ever seems to last.

Enjoy it while you can, gang.