Goodbye, Summer

We had two days of 62-degree weather, cool, beautiful, and with a constant breeze, and I can't help but feel that we're almost done. The kids are counting down until the first day of school, and I realize that summer is almost gone.

This summer, we made it to the ocean once. Why "days at the beach during the summer" is such a common measurement of satisfaction is beyond me. It's a quantitative metric we seem to compute by instinct and frame with guilt.

And that one beach day wasn’t the full-on wave experience—just a trip to our usual calm spot on the Sound. The sand was smooth, and the water was just cold enough to nip a little. Surprisingly, the beach snack shop had the finest chicken sandwich I’ve ever eaten - the teenager working the grill must be the next Anthony Bourdain.

One of my kids is off camping with a friend for a week, which has made me think a bit. It's cold here, but colder up north where she is. Like most parents, I spend an inordinate amount of energy worrying about them freezing. I've never heard of any child actually freezing, but you never know. The friend’s mom has been texting pictures of them reading together in collapsible chairs, and there is nothing much cuter. I’ve realized that I’ve never camped with my kids for that long. It’s one of those experiences that any of us could have, but that is too easy to nix. 

I'm thinking about how the time of summers compound on each other; the small decisions we make about what we do roll up over the decades into big life decisions. The things we don't do roll up, too, into something approximating regret. It strikes me now that there are relatively few things we regret doing but many that we regret not doing. It's one of those simplest of equations that we usually only understand how to balance later in life.

Summer, more than any season, makes us promises - but it is up to us to keep them. There are still a couple of weeks of official summer - let's remember to do one or two more things that don't involve a screen and a desk.