EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK: Short time at summer’s end

We’re running production a day early because half the staff will be traveling for the rest of the week. I’m staying in Boston for a couple extra days so a couple of my kids can look at schools there.

I’m back in town next week, just in time for another newspaper production, and then it’s just a few days before we’re off again, this time to South Carolina for a long-awaited and well-deserved family celebration. School starts for the college kids literally a couple days after we return; our high-schooler goes back just 10 days later.

And just like that, the summer’s over.

Something happens to your concept of time when editing a weekly newspaper. I know this. You don’t dare look too far ahead, because the sheer volume of the workload can swallow you whole. Best practice is to concentrate on this week and next week, with a light eye towards the future. If you can remember next year what you did this year, you should be okay.

And in that way, the time goes by very quickly. Then you start to realize that you don’t have as much of it left as you used to.

When I was very young, when I was rich in time, when I had a wealth of time, so much time I could scarcely count it, let alone conceive of the amount of time I potentially possessed… I never kept track of it, never a watch nor even a calendar in my room. Summers lasted forever then. And if one summer could last forever, the rest of your life was simply beyond measure.

Until it wasn’t.

My days go by so quickly now, like heartbeats, and the weeks don’t take long to pile into months. The seasons go by so fast they’re more like a fleeting feeling than milestones in the passage of time, distilled into one trip, one activity, one meal. This past winter was beef stew cooked in a Dutch oven. This summer is the one where I can travel again, quickly as it goes.