“The last day of school: the moment you realize that summer is just a new beginning.”
Anthony T. Hincks
I’ve never really minded growing up.
Sure, it comes with trade-offs—the kind that swap freedom for responsibility, and innocence for experience. But most of the time, I’ve found the exchange rate fair. Mostly.
Still, this time of year always stirs something in me. A feeling that lives somewhere between memory and magic. That moment—the last day of school—when the world cracked open and the air itself seemed lighter.
It was the doorway to a kingdom of sunscreen, chlorine, and endless afternoons. The sound of the final bell was both a finish line and a starting gun. Childhood’s most perfect transition: from routine to possibility.
As an adult, it’s the closest thing to that feeling you get at 4:59 on a Friday before a three-day weekend—only stretched across an entire season.
Sure, summer still had chores: weeds to pull, lawns to mow, fences to paint. But it also had midnight games, barefoot scrapes, and, eventually, the thrilling mystery of girls from other schools. (They always seemed to know more about the world, didn’t they?)
These days, I drive past a small middle school on my way home. Last week, I saw the kids burst through the doors, arms raised, backpacks swinging, faces lit up like fireworks.
And I remembered.
That final test. The tension before the bell. The yearbooks, the scribbled notes, the unspoken sense that we were all getting a little older together—and that somehow, that mattered.
There’s a soft-focus kind of magic in those memories, a glow that no adult summer can quite replicate. Watching those kids, I felt it again—the weightless joy of being free, if only for a little while.
I don’t miss the homework, the grades, or the anxiety of algebra. But I do miss that old friend—summer itself.
The one that made everything feel like it was just beginning.
