Much of the country has long since moved into summer break, some having done so as early as in the last weeks of May. New York State schools, sadly, delay summer break interminably. We have an expansive school holiday schedule with a full Christmas and winter break, a spring break, the Jewish high holidays, and several others — and now Juneteenth is a day off, meaning that the state-mandated number of school days cannot possibly be completed before the final week of June. The past few days, when temperatures have been reaching into triple digits, made the children feel as though they had completed a grueling physical task.
They are at the age when it is impossible to tell, by hearing alone, whether their screams during play have been stimulated by sheer delight or by sheer dismemberment of one of their limbs. It is a hawklike yawping roar of either triumph or pain, induced by the collision of bodies on an inflatable waterslide in the backyard. Either way, if they are home, we have to work from the room that has a view of the backyard.
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