Summer's End

by Judith Viorst

One by one the petals drop There’s nothing that can make them stop. You cannot beg a rose to stay. Why does it have to be that way?

The butterflies I used to chase Have gone off to some other place. I don't know where. I only know I wish they didn't have to go.

And all the shiny afternoons So full of birds and big balloons And ice cream melting in the sun are done. I do not want them done.

School has started in Ohio and Florida and in some private schools in Delaware. Others are preparing to start next week, but my son in Philly has until September 8th. When I joked this morning that it’s a good thing because he has yet to begin his summer homework; my sister, knowing my son was in the car, exclaimed over the speaker phone in wonderfully auntie fashion: “Well, who wants to do homework in the summer?”

Don’t tell Per, but I do agree. In spite of studies that show children lose too much ground over the summer and in spite of two-working-parent families and single-parent families who struggle to know what to do with children home for three months, I still think summer is for chasing butterflies and smelling roses, running through fountains and playing b-ball into the night.

That’s probably the true reason that I am happy that Per has until September 8th to get that homework done because when he returns to school, in some way so do I and in some either real or imagined way summer is, not technically, but in effect over. And borrowing from Ms. Viorst: I do not want it done.

- Pastor Dianne