I say it every year, but shouldn’t I? Shouldn’t we? Be excited and completely in awe of summer’s return? I long for it. As if it were the last day of school before release. That first breeze that kisses my newly bared legs erases the years in between and flings open the school doors of youth. It sings the song of children’s laughter — a year’s relief. It races us to the open windowed bus and flies the paper let go from chubby hands. It drops us off one by one into this beginning — this beginning that will last forever, if we just remain in the driveway of summer vacation. But the wiggles in our legs and the jimbles in our hearts say go, Go, GO! And we race in, because joy bars none, and knows no time constraints. 

Is that too much? Too much to expect from summer’s first breeze? No. Never. What does it matter that I haven’t ridden a bus in decades? My knees still quiver in the morning driveway. Ready. Always ready to carry me into the ever of joy.