Well, it's here. The last day of summer.
Last night, we stayed up late. We joked and laughed and talked about what the next nine months would be like. We snuggled. We all slept all night in the big bed, together.
This morning we slept in. We laid around and took our time getting up. We are, even now, still wearing our jammies. We are just hanging out and enjoying these last few hours of nothing do do and nowhere to be.
In a little while, we'll put on clothes that don't match and only kind of run a brush through our hair and put on our flip flops and we'll go get last-day-of-summer Icees. We'll go to a park and drink them slowly, just because we can. After all, no one is expecting us to be anywhere. They'll melt before we're finished with them, but we don't really care. They'll get all over us but it's OK because we don't have to look any certain way, because it's summer -- even if only for a short while longer. We'll talk, like we always do, about everything and nothing. No one but us will find any of it interesting.
This evening, we'll have all of our favorite things for dinner. They will talk about how they feel about tomorrow. How excited they are to see friends. How anxious they are about what the new teachers will be like and if things will be hard or easy or somewhere in between. How fun it will be to start a new year of learning and growing and discovering and becoming. I will listen and smile, but all I will able to think about is how much I'll miss them.
Eventually, maybe we'll go out and watch the sunset. We won't talk. We'll probably each be thinking something different, but we'll keep whatever it is to ourselves. We'll just enjoy being together like this in these last few minutes of easy freedom before time continues its inexorable and merciless march forward. The colors in the sky will soothe us by reminding us that endings can be beautiful and inspirational and lead us into bright futures. After it's over, we will go to bed at a reasonable hour so that we can get up early, ready to face whatever the future brings.
And, quietly, just like that, this summer will slip away and become last summer. And we will be so sorry to see it go.
Luckily, we know that, somewhere out there, next summer sits and waits patiently for us, like an old friend.
