Summer's End

And just like that, Summer is over.  

I left the house at 5:45 a.m. this morning to drive JP to MBA, so he could have breakfast and get on a bus for the long ride to the Ocoee River.  He and his 9th grade classmates are white water rafting on the Ocoee River today, retuning this evening.  

Although he doesn't start school until Wednesday, JP was on campus quite a bit the end of last week.  Registration.  Photos for his school identification card.  Social Awareness Day.  And, of course, cross country practice.

JP in high school.  Crazy.

Just as crazy, though, is the fact that Joe starts middle school at USN today.  5th grade.  Travel group.  Moving from classroom to classroom.  Advisory group.  No recess, per se, which somehow makes me feel the most sad and nostalgic.  I'll miss asking him in the evenings about his exploits on the football and soccer fields at recess.  Hearing Joe excitedly recount throwing a last minute touchdown to win that day's football game was a highlight of my day for the last few years.  

Those stories are gone, now, and likely to never return as Joe moves into a different phase of his academic life.  A more serious phase, in a way.  More studying, less fooling around at school with his friends.  That's the end of the innocence for him that I've been thinking about this summer.  

Time is elusive.  Hard to find and so very hard to hold onto.  The harder you squeeze it or try to hold it in your hands, the faster it seems to pass one by.  The boys grow and change, every day, and it become harder and harder to remember them as they once were.  That makes me sad and nostalgic, too.

As JP and I drove in the dark to MBA this morning, I played one of my favorite Avett Brothers' songs.  Left on Laura, Left on Lisa or, as JP used to call it when he first heard it and fell in love with it age 3, "The Sad Song."  He smiled when it started playing - my 15 year old son - and looked at the display on the dashboard of my truck.  

"I couldn't remember what this song was called," he said.  

"You used to call it the sad song," I replied.  "When you were little and I played it for you."

"That's right," he said, chuckling to himself.  "The sad song."

What JP doesn't know, or doesn't remember, is that Left on Laura, Left on Lisa was the first song he and fell in love with together.  We used to drive around the neighborhood in my old Yukon Denali and listen to that song over and over again.  I can remember the far-off look in his face, sitting in the carseat directly behind me at age 3, when I played it for the first time.

"Play that song again, Daddy."  

And I did.  And I will.  For the rest of my life.

Goodbye summer.  Goodbye youth.