Our Summer of Tomorrow
Women’s Campaign Fund
We waited and waited, planned and planned some more, and pulled like a dog on a leash. We were so ready. Finally, the bell rung.
COVID Class is out for summer.
Out we raced, from the confinement of the COVID classroom, the daily instructions and rules, the new lessons learned — or at least delivered. Each week, new and more variations of our lessons needed to be learned, it seemed, with no end visible.
We learned a bit, and we yearned a lot.
We longed for the simplicity of summer. Now, here it is.
Now, what comes next?
Our list to “live” again is long and jammed, no matter where we sit and ponder, no matter where we started. That glimmer in spring of freedom and rapture now becomes a summer of… well, pencil in the word of your choice.
We want to forget. We best not.
For forgetting does not move us forward through the thickets. It lures us to walk around the challenges. We have June to get our summer legs again, July to move forward, and August to settle in with what we’ve learned. To take that, all of that, and make it ready for when our education begins again in September.
Because to achieve #5050x2028, we must succeed with today’s imperatives, beginning this fall. Yes, we need summer to rest and recover and reload our energy for the hard work on the hard issues that continue to prowl.
We cannot be like the cicadas, who burst forth, make much noise, and then die off long before summer’s end. Their kind can wait 17 years for another chance; we cannot.
This must be the summer of our tomorrows.
As school returns in the fall, so do the realities of the world. And if we are not careful, so will the COVID classroom. We must take care to meet the challenges that await beyond our old classroom walls — eager to keep our vision of summer as the platform for our best days ahead, not as a sequel to that horror movie we saw at the drive-in last year.
Our “to do” list brooks no rebuff. We hear much talk of violence in the streets, unleashing of pent-up anger, a do-nothing Congress, voting rights under assault. The news is hardly summer vacation reading.
All the more reason for us to restore our focus and embrace all fellow persuaders for our summer of tomorrow, a summer of substance.
COVID school is out for summer. Drive carefully.
©2021 Women’s Campaign Fund
#5050x2028
