At the close of every July, I find myself almost uncontrollably feeling the sad sense that summer is over.
As a born and raised Idaho farm girl, I know that isn’t true. There is still plenty of farm work to do. Where I’m from, wheat harvest is just wrapping up. Neighbors will begin third cutting hay within a couple weeks, and fourth cutting won’t come until mid-September. The fields still need irrigated, and there’s plenty to do outside.
I know this, yet I still find myself engulfed by that feeling. Summer is over.
Reflections of Youth
Likely, this feeling stems from years of not only attending public schools that started mid-week in the middle of the month, but also from years of playing fall sports, that hosted season tryouts the first weekend in August every year.
Ending my summer play.
Though it’s been more than a decade since I attended high school, I still find seasons of my year centered around those sporting experiences from years ago.
- Flashbacks of running laps around the track field in the hot, muggy, and did I mention HOT August sun, pushing myself to run the mile in under 7 minutes just to make the high school volleyball team.
- Or … reminding myself not to eat very much at Thanksgiving dinner because the coach’s favorite game Black Friday Practice was to run us until someone threw up.
- Or It’s the first part of December and panic starts setting in at 9 o clock every night because my alarm is going to go off at 4:40 am and I can’t be late. I’m waking up sever times during the night just to check the time. All so I will be late and have to run sets of stairs for early morning basketball practice.
My high school sports playing days ended more than ten years ago, yet that panic still disrupts me.
And the feeling that disrupts me the most is the feeling that summer is over, that this time of carefree, unscheduled time with my kids, time spent irrigating and tending to my garden, or playing in the water under the hot summer sun — that feeling is probably the saddest for me.
Even ten years later, I’m still trying to retrain my brain that summer, in fact, is very much not over.
Quite the contrary, we are very much smack dab in the middle of summer still.
In fact I quite literally picked our first ripe tomato out of the garden just two days ago, folks. Summer is not over yet! (or if it is, I’m in BIG trouble!)
We have weeks of hot days left ahead of us, weeks still where are plants need watered and our gardens need tended.
The days are still long, the temperatures still blazing, yet why is that I feel (and I’m operating under the assumption that I’m not alone in this feeling) like summer is over?
I have spent the last two weeks reflecting on this very question.
Why do I feel this way? As a born and raised farm girl who loves the outdoors, who loves caring for plants and the natural growth cycle of all God’s living things – how is it that something inside me has fallen for such a misconception?
How have I been so duped to believe that summer ends the first of August?
How could I feel something so unreal?
Life around School
I fear this article might suddenly sound like a dramatic YouTube short or TikTok, but I think the only plausible answer is this:
Because I have been trained to feel that way.
Because I have been conditioned to believe that summer ends the first part of August.
The answer is in my high school experiences listed at the first of this article. Why does it feel like summer is over even though it so obviously isn’t?
Because school starts in the middle of summer, and before that fall sports practices start. For many, even before season practice starts, there was camp and pre-season games – so for some maybe there wasn’t even a summer. Certainly not one spent outside raising a sweat the collected to the hay and dirt, or one spent working on your hands and knees in the mud pulling weeks.
Summer equaled the vacation from school.
Half my teachers called it that, “summer vacation” or “summer break”.
As if to indicate that school – life in a classroom with pencil in hand scribbling fiercely in a notebook between teachers’ lectures – was our life. Summer was a just a break, a vacation for a handful of weeks, from that life of school.
How backwards that seems to me now.
A new generation
A year ago, I made the decision to homeschool my daughter. She was starting kindergarten and I was one the fence about public school versus homeschool.
I went to public school kindergarten through graduation, and I love school. I was one of those nerdy kids who genuinely liked learning, who spent her lunch hour tucked away in the corner behind a book. That was me.
My husband on the other hand never attended a public school. Ever. His education was split between homeschool and private school.
As a couple we had a bit of an opinion difference you could say about education for our kids.
Despite my early hesitations and complete fear or ruining our 5-year-old with inadequate schooling, I decided to homeschool.
And it was challenging. Let me tell you. We definitely had some bump-in-the-road days, especially the first 4 months. And plenty of hard days until we wrapped up our lessons the Friday before Memorial Day.
The months of May, June, and July were rollercoasters of me flip-flopping over the idea of homeschooling our daughter again for 1st grade (and also our other daughter for pre-school), or to send her to the public elementary school (which, by the way, I have only heard praise for the school and its teachers).
The bus stop for several surrounding houses is right outside our door, and my kids love watching the neighbor kids load in the morning and unload in the afternoon.
It has really been a difficult decision for me to make.
I confirmed with myself, though, just 10 or so days ago that we are indeed going to continue homeschooling at least for another year.
Why?
I think much of my decision rests up this internal confusion I myself recognize and have already painted for you.
Because summer is not over. There is still a garden to tend, lakeside beach trips to enjoy, and a big wide world out there for us to explore.
The outdoor world is too amazing for me to consent to have my six-year-old confined to a desk and chair now until next June.
I don’t want my kids growing up with the misconception that summer ends the first of August. We’ve still got a whole lot of summer yet.
