It’s 7:52am on a Tuesday morning. It’s April 8th. And it’s currently snowing. Welcome to springtime in Western Pennsylvania.
I’ve been longing for summer recently: days by the pool, long evenings on the porch, volleyball matches, and kids shouting and running and sweating until way past bedtime. And no school.
It hasn’t helped that I’ve been teaching To Kill a Mockingbird which is thick with summertime nostalgia. The last day of school is when Dill arrives in Maycomb, an imaginative playmate with endless creativity and curiosity. He’s the essence of summer: all play, no responsibilities, ghost stories, and glasses of lemonade. His arrival is anticipated for weeks, and his presence draws old and young into a renewed spirit of recreation and fun. But every September, he kisses you on the cheek, hops a train, and it’s back to school.
Ugh. School. Even the best of April school days can begin to sag with the drudgery of Scout’s first grade experience: “Indeed, they were an endless Project that slowly evolved into a Unit, in which miles of construction paper and wax crayon were expended by the State of Alabama in its well-meaning but fruitless efforts to teach me Group Dynamics.”
This snowy, 30-degree morning aside, all the flowering and greening and warming around us is proclaiming to us as we stare longingly out the classroom window: Summer is coming! Before we know it, Dill will arrive “in a blaze of glory,” and we’ll be turning to one another and saying, “What’ll we play today?”
While, for now, Dill must always leave come September, there will come a day when our longing for a pure, unadulterated, endless summer will be forever satisfied. The Sun will arrive in a blaze of glory, the earth will become a limitless playground where no gate is ever closed, evenings will glow on and on and night will never come. When He comes, summer will never leave again: “They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever” (Rev 22:5).
A Taste of Summer.
If summer can’t get here quick enough, here’s a pie from King Arthur Baking that tastes like a slice of lemonade. We bake these lemon chess pies at The Hutch, and its tart and sweet flavor will remind you that we are so so close to the lazy days of summer.
Click here to get the recipe:
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