It happens every year. The Queen Anne’s lace blooms—delicate yet sturdy, dainty yet wild—and I feel the pang of August. Summer is sunsetting. The heat index may still be one-hundred-and-sweaty degrees, but make no mistake: The days are getting shorter. The cicadas are humming their annual dirge. It’s time to dig out the backpacks from the back of the closet.

I’ve always been of the “do your homework before you play” mindset. This generally worked for me . . . when I had a finite to-do list.

But as a mom? It turns out, your homework is never finished.

***

We made a “Summer Adventures” list this year, as is our tradition. The goals were small but grand, especially if you’re four and seven:

Run through the sprinkler.
Make root beer floats.
Go hiking in the woods.
Have a water balloon fight.
Get a shaved ice.
Try out that new playground.
Have a breakfast picnic.
Go on a road trip.
Make s’mores.

We played and ate our way through the summer, delighting as we checked each item off our list. The days extended before us like a limitless shoreline.

Until we spotted the first heads of Queen Anne’s lace, bobbing obliviously in the field. Suddenly the air was full of back-to-school flurry: making lists and gathering supplies, reconfiguring schedules and resetting bedtimes. Summer was sprinting to a close, and when we looked at our list, we saw we had more adventures left than weekends.

And that’s how I found myself leaving work outrageously early on the last Monday of summer to check our last adventure off the list. We ate a picnic and let the watermelon juice run down our chins. We ran and climbed and scraped our knees. I made them pose for pictures (even though they insisted on silly ones) because by next summer, they won’t fit in those shoes/shirts/car seats anymore, to say nothing of the crook of my arm.

The Queen Anne’s lace disappears at first frost, after all.

I don’t know how to savor every minute. I do know that it’s unrealistic to successfully juggle every plate. Sometimes the best we can do is choose which ones to drop. And every once in while, the right thing to do on a Monday afternoon is play…even though you haven’t finished your homework yet.