The Impossible Summer!

It is with a very heavy sigh that I note the passing of this last summer season. I know that technically summer will be with us in the Northern Hemisphere for some weeks to come, but for most folks summer will cease when school starts up again. For me, a teacher of more than three decades, that's a pattern all too firmly ingrained. It's not impossible that this might be my last summer, at least in the sense that I might well retire from teaching after this year. I'm easily old enough and certainly weary enough. But without the dour regimen of a work week, the tender sweetness of summer days might lose some flavor. It's exceedingly nice when the days of the week become indistinguishable and you cannot tell a Saturday from a Wednesday or a Monday save by the spurious check of the calendar or by seeing what's on the television. But that's a trap too, as time slithers by with an every quickening pace and robs one of the pleasure of the moment. We want summer to with us always, but it's precious because it isn't. That's an impossible summer indeed.

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