Summer of Paradoxes
It was the summer I broke free of work. It was the summer I drowned in work. It was the summer I grew closer to my kids. It was the summer my kids took one step further away from me. It was the summer of giving. It was the summer of being selfish. It was the longest summer. It was the summer that flew by. For most people in New Jersey, summer begins Memorial Day weekend when they head "down the shore." Our family is not a shore family, but we do mark the weekend as the unofficial start of summer. After Memorial Day, school settles down to a trickle - no sports or activities, few assignments left, the smell of summer wafting through open windows in buildings without air conditioning - and work is a little less intense than during the academic year. This year Memorial Day weekend was a four-day weekend because we did not use all of our snow days, and with only four full days of scho
