Welcome to August. The first days of which bring to mind all of the things that you had planned on doing this summer. Back in March, April, and May, when summer seemed to be this vast empty slate that you were going to joyously fill with all the things your ideal summer would be filled with. Things you think about now, with the gaze of September fixing itself on your dwindling time in the sun, and say with a sigh, “Maybe next summer?”

Maybe next summer the camper will spend more time in a campground? Maybe the boat will get soaked from the bottom up with lake water, more so than the top down with rain? Maybe the bike tires will roll further, the hiking boots will hike higher, the roads will be drove, the horseshoes tossed, the clubs swung, the sites seen, the family and friends visited…maybe?

I don’t have a boat, but I see a lot of them waiting patiently in driveways. Many of which will have a “For Sale” sign hung on them this fall by someone who had plans to be on the water more than their plans allowed. The story that plays out in our head when we buy such things rarely matches reality. It’s easy to get caught up in a good story.

Spring ideas of an ideal summer succumbing to fall? So it goes.

At least the kids will be locked up in school a few hours a day irritating other adults. Gleefully engaged in the task of ensuring that the teachers patience fades faster than their tans.

As a parent of adult children, maybe I haven’t yet fully acclimated to not being the summertime director of recreation and head of transportation for young ones that need directing and transporting? Maybe when much of your time and plans become your own they can drift without notice more easily? I do miss being the dad to little ones, but I am also enjoying all that comes with being the dad to young adults.

In the book “A Brief History of Thought”, author Luc Ferry wrote that “when we live in terms of plans for the future and believe that our happiness depends upon their accomplishment, we forget that there is no other reality than the one in which we are living here and now.”

Here and now. Here and now the reality is that we have a day, an hour, a few minutes in August of 2022. I’ll take what I can get. Less than some, more than others.

All in all, it’s been a good summer. An ideal summer? Ideal enough.