End of summer blues

Yesterday we got the annual email that our neighborhood pool was closing for the winter. I realized Orion and I were probably the last people to swim in it — we caught it just at sunset on the last full day of summer.

Fall is usually my favorite season but this year I miss summer already. Haven’t felt this way since high school: the summer of 1988, just before my senior year. I remember feeling this every year: ah, this is my last time at the swimming pool until next summer.

When you’re a kid, there’s always “next summer,” isn’t there? And “next Christmas” and “next birthday” and “next school year.” “Next [x]” was always so far away…like a sixth or an eighth or a seventeenth of your life…

One of the great joys and tiny tragedies of living with kids is reliving that cycle, but at 2x speed.