A Summer Well... Spent

I saw my last firefly of the summer. A flash, seen out of the corner of my eye, was like a door closing in my face. And now that I'm doing my first laundry of the year in the bottom of Manly in a room that feels like summer hasn't left the building, I feel like reflecting on what's on the other side of that door. Things I learned this summer (in no particular order):

1. You can do many, many, many things with LEGOs. Many things. Trebuchets being my favorite, of course.

2. All children under the age of 12 think that you are over the age of 35, at best.

3. Kickball is intense and there is a real strategy to Mancala.

4. Sidney Carton is quite possibly my favorite hero in a novel.

5. You can survive off of pasta, Parmesan cheese, water and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for at least a month and a half.

6. God really is good, all the time.

7. You may not smoke, eat or drink while practicing the organ at Wesley.


8. The lights in the alley in between Newman and Wesley stay on until 12 AM.

9. Campus is gorgeous at dawn.


10. Sometimes you think that you'll ruin something just by being there.

11. Sometimes you're very wrong.

12. Where you are is where you're meant to be. If it's not, you wouldn't be there. If it's not where you're going to be, you won't be there.

13. Your heart can break and rejoice in the space of 2 seconds.

14. Mephibosheth was spared by King David. Go read about it in 2 Samuel.

15. I really don't know my summer constellations.

16. I don't know what it's like to be in love, though I do know what it's like to love Someone you can't see.

17. The Star Theater is cold. Bring a jacket.

18. Spider bites are TERRIBLE.

19. You can't swipe guests into the pool.

20. Campus is much more apparently hilly on a bike.

21. Pluto's official designation is a 'plutoid.'

22. Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is AMAZING, as is Godspell.

23. The roasted almonds are in between the pecans and the walnuts and cotton candy ice cream with butterfingers mixed-in is more popular than you would think.

24. Wesley really is like my pre-college life: The downstairs looks like South, the upstairs has the same amount of random stuff as my house, and the sanctuary reminds me like the old sanctuary at St. Luke's.

25. I should like very much to defy gravity.

Everyone asks how your summer was the first time you see them when you get back to school. What am I supposed to say? Boring? Incorrect, as I was quite busy and engaged. Unproductive? Also incorrect, I made a good little chunk of change and read a couple of books. Interesting? Perhaps, but that's not its defining feature. Oddly painful, comforting, restricting and freeing at the same time? Yes.

But I want something to show for it, something that will make me remember and make me forget, something that will cement it into my mind and be my defining triumph, like the lift in Dirty Dancing. I probably simply want to prove to myself something that cannot be proved.

For now, though, I'll carry on with school, my jobs and my friends, sit back and label the memories as summer and my summer love as God. One day that'll change, but only when the change doesn't matter.