School is out on the Island and the kids are free. Don’t you envy them?
Can you ever recapture that feeling of freedom on the last day of school? After 10 months of imprisonment, the whole summer lies ahead, glorious with possibilities. Nothing quite compares to that moment when you’re standing on the threshold of summer, not even the next day — on the first day of vacation, the dwindling of summer has already begun.
It’s an outlook in line with that of a colleague who commented last week on the summer solstice: “It’s the longest day of the year. The days will start getting shorter now.” He was implying that the descent toward the gloom of winter has begun.
The last-day-of-school excitement is an exquisite feeling, more precious because it is fleeting. As you get older, you realize the summer is finite, that it will be over all too soon. You realize life includes responsibilities. In the teen years, summer means looking for a job, a precursor to the realities of adult life.
Retirement might be similar to the end of the school year, but it’s not the same. When you’re young, two months of summer is a lifetime, an endless stretch of freedom and fun. At retirement, you have had to come to grips with mortality, and while you might have 20 good years left, you know your time is limited.
There are a few who try to hang on to that feeling. They spend their time pursuing pleasure and avoiding responsibility, building nothing and achieving little.
It’s an empty life. We can’t be eight or 10 years old forever.
But even though some of us are confined to office cubicles and jealous of the younger set enjoying the carefree days of July and August, summer is still worth celebrating and enjoying. We can’t store the golden moments for use in the grey days of January, so we should enjoy them as they happen, accept them as the unconditional gifts that they are.
I like it that our national holiday falls on July 1. Although the calendar tells us summer officially starts on June 21, Canada Day is the real gateway to summer. I’m not sure if it was good planning on the part of the fathers of Confederation, but I’m glad they didn’t put it in, say, January or February.
Oh, sure, I know people enjoy winter festivals all over the world, but it’s hard to imagine parades, fireworks, outdoor concerts and festivals in the dead of winter. That kind of celebration goes better with sunshine and shorts, fresh air and blue skies.
It’s a day to set aside political differences and regional rivalries, a time to look in wonder on this improbable experiment that is Canada. Let’s step away from our problems for a moment — they’ll still be there when we get back, and maybe we can tackle them with fresher ideas and renewed enthusiasm.
If we celebrate our country’s riches, we’ll be better equipped to work on poverty. If we reflect on the principles that strengthen the country, we can better deal with the corruption that weakens it.
Let’s be just Canadians, at least for one day. Not English Canadians, French Canadians, Indo-Canadians or aboriginal Canadians, just Canadians united in our differences.
That doesn’t mean we all need to be the same — study of any natural habitat shows that monoculture is weakness while diversity is strength.
But enough serious talk — school’s out, summer is here. Let’s have fun.
Back to the subject of that last day of school. I remember one in particular — it was the day Grade 2 ended. We were a joyful crowd of five or six boys and girls, loaded down with leftover notebooks and pencils, giddy at being freed. No more teachers. No more bells. No more hunching over desks trying to make letters legible or numbers correct.
We plotted how to celebrate our newfound freedom, dreamed up adventures in the wild, explorations into unknown territory. The ideas flew back and forth on what we would do, now that we could call our time our own.
We hit on the perfect solution. We gathered on one of our porches, hauled out our pencils and notebooks, and spent the rest of the afternoon playing school.
