The great season of Easter is over, and the church is once again in ordinary time. Inside the walls of the parishes, vestments and altar cloths have gone from white to green, just as the grass and the trees and the plants have begun to assume their summer colors. Students are either leaving school for the long summer break, or looking longingly out the windows as they enter the homestretch of the academic year. People in the working world might not get the summer off, but enough of them take time away that even the rush hour traffic dies down a bit. Everyone seems ready to take a deep breath, poised for a period of growth and regeneration before entering the fray once more. I’ve always felt that the real New Year is in the fall, when students go back to school. That’s likely because I was a child who liked school, at least the learning part of it, and found shopping for school supplies to be great fun. It might be the same for other students who like shopping for new school clothes, or for athletes who can’t wait to get back to school sports. But somehow, even if the beginning of the academic year marks a new start, the close of the year doesn’t feel much like an end or a death; it’s more like a time of transformation, such as when a caterpillar forms a chrysalis and emerges a different creature. Every summer, it seems, the kids grow like the proverbial weeds, so much so that clothes bought in May don’t fit quite right come September. While the world has changed enough that they can’t spend their days roaming the neighborhood until the streetlights come on, they still spend more time outdoors and more time doing what they please instead of what they must. It’s a challenge for working parents, especially of young school-age kids, to find the kind of activities and supervision they need, while still getting into work themselves. As the kids get older, it becomes a bit easier; first, they make clear what it is they want to be doing, and soon they reach an age where they can be (long to be …) left to their own devices for brief periods of time. So this year, may ordinary time be a time of peace and growth, a chance to slow down and breathe. Soon enough, the green of the vestments will be far brighter than the green of the grass, turning yellow and brown under the late summer sun. Soon enough, the leaves will be falling from the trees and the air will smell of new shoes and freshly sharpened pencils. When ordinary time gives way to Advent, summer will have ended and fall will be getting ready to pass away into winter, and, in Chicago at least, the idea of whiling away an afternoon with a book in the backyard will be a distant memory and a hope for things to come.