Wishing that the summer would never end. It stays light out ’til 8:30 and we go down to the river after supper to look for spider holes and crazy ants. The kids take a break from shooting space aliens in cyberspace and revert to cave children happily throwing dirt clods into the murky water. Bob stops talking geek and I shake off the downtown commuter blues.

In less than a month we will trade this for nights full of mandatory reading and math problems. We will fight about getting homework done before bath time. We will fight over TV and bedtime. We will cram gymnastics and flag football in between spasms of work. We will fight.

Savoring these last few days of long sunlight and lazy evenings. Pretending to be prepared for the onslaught of fall. But this time, I’m not ready for the change of seasons. I don’t yet want to be.

First Grade School Supply List:

- 1 package red checking pencils
- 2 pkgs manila paper
- 2 marble cover composition books, Norcom, wide-ruled, 100 sheets/200 pages
- 3 writing tablets (dashed mid-line)
- 1 one-inch 3-ring binder with cover sleeve

Questions for Lamar Consolidated Independent School District:

- Is this a school supply list or a scavenger hunt?
- Why does Wal-Mart have your supply list but virtually none of your supplies?
- Can I get a permission slip from you for my boss saying that I need to be excused from work so I can get all this bought by Aug. 23?

Here’s what’s not on my list this year: Girl’s backpack and lunch kit. Nana took her and her 5-year-old cousin shopping for these items. Nana suggested Tinkerbell or Hello Kitty.

Girl picked a matching set covered with fire-breathing dragons, which she described to me on the phone.

“They’re 3D!” she said. “They were the only ones that were 3D!”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“You know,” she said louder, as if I were a foreign tourist, “THREE DEE!!”

Her little girl cousin picked a Spider Man backpack and space alien lunch kit.

“I’m shocked. I don’t know what happened to these little girls,” Nana said.

“Brothers,” I said.

I drive an old BMW. Only it’s new to me. We bought it from a dealer a few months ago. It’s 8 years old with about 100,000 miles on it. Why did I do this? Oh, do I really have to go into that? I bought it because it goes VROOM VROOM VROOM when I step on the pedal. Do I really need another reason?

Anyhow, this Beemer has some electrical problems. That sounds negative, so I’ll just do like we do in corporate land and refer to them as electrical concerns. Electrical issues. The little panel that’s supposed to tell me if there’s something wrong with the car has some bulbs missing. So when I’m driving with the trunk lid open, it flashes “TRIIIIK LID OIIN” which I can pretty much decipher, but sometimes it’s just a one-word warning, like “IIDIIII” and I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean. Today I hit a bump and a little triangle that looked like a nuclear bomb symbol flashed for a split second –a sign of the apocalypse, or at least, engine failure?

So here I’m going to make some big fat metaphor about how driving is like life and the little flashing messages seem to be like garbled signs from God. For instance, I ask God for direction and I meet an old friend and she tells me how happy she is being a teacher and I think, huh, maybe it’s a sign from God that I should be a teacher, but then I think about it for a while and decide, nah, I don’t want to do that, and so, was it a real sign or just a little flashing light that I don’t need to pay much attention to?

If I’m driving down the road and a symbol for a burning bush pops up on my dashboard, I’ll let you know. Only with all those bulbs missing, it’ll probably look like a squid. Or a tiny little oil spill.

Secretly grateful for night tummy, a strange condition that seems to afflict Girl only at bedtime. It’s come on suddenly for the past two nights, happening right after she brushes her teeth.

“My tummy hurts,” she tells me. Sometimes she is more descriptive: “My tummy feels like it’s being pulled in two directions.”

Apparently the cure for night tummy is for me to lie down with Girl in her bed until she falls asleep. I used to do this on a regular basis until about six months ago, when she abruptly decided she didn’t need me or my bedtime stories to fall asleep anymore. Just a kiss and a prayer, thank you very much. She wanted to be alone. So the Adventures of Emily Poochydoochydachydoo, my rambling bedtime saga, came to a screeching halt way before I was ready for it to end. But you can’t beg a six-year-old to be more needy. You have to respect their small declarations of independence.

I think night tummy is really about saving face. For a girl like Girl, it’s easier to say “my tummy hurts” than “I still need you, Mommy.”

I’ve liked the last two nights, lying besider her in her small bed, staring at all the toys in her room as her breath grows steady and even. Happy that my baby can still sometimes be my baby.