This Thursday is the date that Aine starts her 6th grade classes. And I am stunned that suddenly, summer is over. Sure, there is still roughly a month left of the season, but that is nullified by the fact that kids are back in school. With school starting, I am left feeling sad. Sad because all the ideas of “what we were going to do this summer” are now left in the “what we hope to do next summer.” Camping out, going to a water park, riding bikes, fishing and more are either going to be hastily organized, attempted on some fall weekend or somehow put in the “wait” category as sleepovers, school activities and the like come to the fore with a force like a Category 7 hurricane.
Not that Aine had a summer bereft of activity this summer. She had plenty of summer camps. The City of Chicago does a decent job of organizing activities, such as swimming, an animal farm, art, games and the like. Then she also attended a second camp, sponsored by the Union League Club of Chicago. Even though Union League Club Summer Camp sounds like something for bankers and lawyers (portfolio hunting 101 and billfold making), this camp was pretty interesting, with robot building, culinary skills, art projects and the like. It ended up being something she really enjoyed.
She was busy from June until now.
We were all busy, but not family busy.
Somehow that all got moved, postponed and pushed back with work, housework, yardwork and some other thing that has “work” at the end of the word.
Now we swivel the guns to face the oncoming school year. We had to get her some new shoes as she had outgrown last year’s shoes. And new uniforms as the ones from just three months ago might as well be from three years ago. A big cardboard box is sitting in the living room, jammed with school supplies. And the list for what is needed by the school is sort of amazing--from rolls of paper towels to rulers, pencils, folders of different sizes, shapes and pockets, highlighters, markers and the list goes on.
Thankfully, Annie has championed (once again) this task and Aine will return to school with everything new for a 21st Century Catholic School 6th Grader.
I think back to my days heading to 6th grade and I think I needed pens, pencils and perhaps some note paper. My uniform was my brother's clothes handed down and up, never fitting right. Even my gym clothes were pre-worn and passed along. I plead the fifth on underwear.
It is odd to think that my school days were closer to Abe Lincoln’s then Aine’s. The computers, I-pads and all the online education and information just didn’t exist when I was her age. But we did have one thing she hasn’t had, and that was a longer summer vacation. To go back to school before September would have been looked on as something odd, even wrong. Kids were supposed to go nuts over summer, at least until age 13, when suddenly we were drafted into corn detasseling.
One Poppa-daughter activity we did was to go out and buy a bass guitar. That’s right, a bass for her schoolmates, all-girl, rock act “The Lemon Zests.” She was able to sit down at the guitar store, play a couple of different bass guitars and very quickly settle on a burgundy colored Gretsch. And even though it was made in China and most likely slapped with some tariff by you-know-who, it still was affordable enough and surprisingly very decent sounding. She was very thrilled for the new instrument, but also that experience of having her musician dad walk into a store and talk music.
The upshot of it all, was we were able to have a little, teeny-tiny bit of time together, as father and daughter. Of course, it wasn’t enough and will never ever be enough. And I wish somehow, I was able to carve out even more time out of this busy non-stop summer to have spent with Aine and Annie. Hopefully next summer, Aine will still want to hang with her dad.
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