I. Summertime Things I Have Missed
By Being Here At School:
Dinners on the back porch, book after book in the backyard, bike rides along the Hudson, lunch downtown by the Capitol building, soft ice-cream (small twist in a cone with rainbow sprinkles, please), musicals in the park, rounds of mini-golf, badminton games in the street, night strolls through the neighborhood.
II. The List
When I was younger, my mom would help my sister and I draw up a list of things we wanted to do over vacation. It didn't matter if vacation was the two months in the summer or the week we got at the end of December, we had our lists ready. It was my mother's reasoning that if we didn't write these things down, the time would pass away without our having done anything that we had hoped to do. My best friend was the type who liked to spend her vacations in bed or on the couch in front of the TV, and she always teased me and my vacation "to-do" lists.
Skinny dipping. Make apple pie. Make tiramisu. Go strawberry picking. Go to a drive in movie.
These are some of the items (all of them still yet to be accomplished) on The List my roommates and I drew up this summer. The List is taped to our refrigerator and reminds us every time we open the freezer door of all the things we have yet to do this summer. We made The List at the beginning of the term, when we were full of excitement and energy. Class? Schoolwork? Bah! We were going to have fun. There were going to be breakfast parties, lunch parties, dinner parties. We were going to make a new kind of dessert each week. We would plan an overnight trip to Tanglewood.
The point of these lists, which my best friend never understood, is so that when vacation time is up, you have a sense of satisfaction, that you didn't just let this time fly by. The problem is that it flies by regardless of how many things you write down and check off.
Now, with the end of the term less than two weeks away, only three items on The List have been triumphantly crossed out. (And two of those cases were added to the list after we had already done them, just so we could feel we were making a little progress.) And if the summer ends, and The List remains more undone than done, that will be okay. At least we thought about all the things we'd like to do, and we still had fun.
III. A Sophomore's Summer
Waking up on a Saturday to find a roommate has cooked us all pancakes, waking up in the middle of the night sweating and feeling that you might melt, waking up and knowing you have a full day of class and work ahead even though this is summertime. Hearing tales of others' summer-spirited adventures, or when you're lucky, having your own. Navigating your way through hordes of tan campers on their way to volleyball, soccer, tennis, and being jealous that they still have this thing called camp and summer vacation. Navigating your way through hordes of adults here for a conference and wondering if that will be you one day. Putting off a little longer that paper, that studying, that reading, and watching a movie instead because this is summer. Getting to know more '03s than you did before, and then realizing how long it could be before you see some of these people again.
IV. The End
When I return home, I will have exactly one week and six days to unpack all my stuff, celebrate my mother's fiftieth birthday, see my sister on her visit home, see my friends if any of them are still there and then pack up all my stuff again for my upcoming Scottish adventure.
Good-bye summer.
