The Top of the Ferris Wheel...

I'm getting that familiar slightly-panicky feeling.... as I admit to myself that July is now a thing of the past. August 1st... wow! Maybe I'm alone in this feeling that at this time of year, something wonderful is ending, yet something equally wonderful is beginning.

I'm reminded of the first paragraph in the prologue of Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt:

The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving rain. These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for after.

Ending are the lazy days of sleeping in and then taking naps... living freely without an agenda...
Beginning are the days of lesson plans, new classrooms, school clothes, marching season... football season... and pumpkin harvest.

It's not here yet, of course... but like that opening paragraph in Tuck Everlasting so vividly explains... we are hanging there in the balance like the top of a Ferris wheel.

I think very near the beginning of the year, we shall study Tuck Everlasting in my 6th grade class... I'm in the mood for it.