Too soon…too soon….<3

I took a walk around our area this morning. It was all so quiet. A little too quiet, actually. 

From Facebook I can see that many of our children are back in school today. Garage doors were closed, basketball hoops hung limp in the breeze, no one passed me on a bike with a fishing backpack and poles reaching heavenward. 

While ours will be going next week, there was the “what class is ______ in” text marathon as we watched the first junior high baseball game of the season last night. 

And yes, I pine for the good old days when school started the day after Labor Day. It also ended right before Memorial Day but I won’t step onto that soap box. 

For me, the simple formula of three months to a season works. In this game plan; winter is December through February, spring follows March through May, summer includes June through August and thus fall naturally occurs September through November. 

But this rhythm is interrupted now with a myriad selection of “First Day of School’s” and a sports schedule that just barely leaves us enough time for a week to rest our yard chairs and really scrub out those water bottles. 

There is also the incredible difference in intensity of temperature and the shortening of daylight that happens in the last two weeks of August. We don’t call these the “dog days of summer” for no reason. 

Or is that outdated as well. 

Sigh. 

It will do me no good to complain. I wonder if in about ten years there will be some intense studies on the benefits of starting school in September and this generation will hang their heads in shame for having done it wrong. 

I hope not. 

We are usually left to the whims of studies done by people we have no contact with who decide that phonics are in, now out; we should have more recess, less recess; our kids should sit, no stand, for lessons…and on and on. 

So we function in the times we are given and figure out how to adjust and welcome the shift in seasons in our own personal way. As for me, I find it helpful to browse the Back to School aisle and nab a few notebooks and fun new pens. 

Because old or new…I do kind of love school. Even if it is starting waaaaay too soon <3