This summer I’m giving myself the gift of time. Antonio Porchia (Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin) said, “The flower that you hold in your hands was born today and already it is as old as you are.”

I’ve reached the age when I know that time passes much too quickly…

It occurs to me that as a teacher, I have the incredible opportunity to change the way I spend my time for those two long months of summer, when I can slip out of the daily routines of earning a living and slip into a slower time stream, more like the days I remember as child on summer holidays. Days when I thought summer would never end and I’d get back to the “real world” of school and friends and doing things.

Carl Sandburg said, ” Time is the coin of your life.  It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent.  Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.

This summer, I plan to do all those things I’ve put aside while teaching classes and meeting writing deadlines, for, as Mignon McLaughlin (The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960), said, “There are whole years for which I hope I’ll never be cross-examined, for I could not give an alibi.”