Beginning is not only a kind of action. It is also a frame of mind, a kind of work, an attitude, a consciousness. ~ Edward Said

Late August. The beginning of the end. That bitter-sweet time of summer when the grass goes brown and brittle, trips to the pool get more than a little old, and the few flowers that continue to bloom look bent and weary. Summer is almost over, as are those long days that seemed so glorious in June but have grown to be sometimes tortuous come August.

Even though we might be ready for the kids to go back to school, we feel a certain nostalgia at summer’s close. Summer, if only through the extended light and later bedtimes, is dramatically different from the rest of the year. It’s a time when we approve of a lower purpose, of unstructured time, of serendipity. It’s a time when it’s all right to do nothing.

During the summer we allow our kids to dawdle at the river, turning over rocks, looking for crayfish, even though it is well past supper-time. We don’t get anxious when our children run around the neighborhood catching fireflies well past nine, or when they come to bed with grass in their hair after rolling down the hill 46 times in a row. “It’s summer,” we say.

We accept this. We like this. We even relish it—the unstructured moments of summer. But, come the last week in August, we grow uncomfortable with this lower purpose and start hankering to turn it off. To get back to business.

By the last week in August, we have shifted gears at such a high rate that many of us are left breath-less. We rush around making sure we have purchased pencils and notebooks and tape and glue and markers and … We check schedules and teacher assignments and pick up and drop off times. We madly fill out forms and try on school clothes to see what fits, what has to be bought. We enroll in music lessons and sports and after-school programs. We check our stash of lunch boxes or paper bags. We line up tooth brushes and combs . . .

Face it. We get a little wild closing up summer and starting the school year. So much so, that we often forget the beginning of the school year is truly a beginning—a time when we can adjust our consciousness to retain a bit of summer’s lesson.

It’s easy, though, to forget those small lessons—the June bug’s iridescent exoskeletons, how a tomato, when it is perfectly ripe, will come off the vine with just the slightest tug. We forget about special, unplanned moments that we were able to have simply because we let ourselves just be with our kids—ambling down the street at dusk, trying to catch a glimpse of some shy rabbits. We forget and, instead, turn ourselves to the business of making our children successful people.

But our children aren’t business. Nor is parenting. And what I am calling a lower purpose is, in large part, what childhood is about—the love of the moment, the learning of the moment. So, before we throw our kids into a breathless schedule of lessons and sports and music and dance and …, we might want to adjust our attitudes about school and success and save a little unscheduled time for the whole family—a place where we can keep summer alive all year long.

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