I used both hands to count the number of summers before my son went to college the other day. I was shocked that there were only six left. Six?

As a teacher, I count myself lucky to have my children day in and day out for two months for the past 13 summers. It’s what I told myself when I cried the mornings I returned from their (too) short maternity leaves. It’s what I tell other teacher-Moms when they start to feel the guilt of being away from their babies. It’s quite honestly the one thing about my job that has saved my sanity these past two years. But I digress.

We have chosen to take our kids all over the place each and every summer. Sometimes it’s just because we are super lucky to have family in vacation destinations, sometimes it’s for the practical reason of renting out our house in our little tourist town. Whatever it is, summers have become sacred to us. Time that is for tradition, and family, and no bedtimes, and sandy feet, and cuddly mornings. Summer is the release breath of growing another year older and trying to take in all that our lives have become: the beauty, the busyness, the people who we are lucky to have surround us year after year.

When I look at my children now, I try to pause in my mind and say: This is her 11 summer, this is his last summer before becoming a teen. I try to give it time in my memory and in my heart to make an imprint, to hold for a little bit before next summer’s moments replace it.

And I want to have something wise to say right now about this. I want to say that I am able to head into the fall without a tug in my belly. I want to say that I did everything I wanted to and crossed everything off our summer to do list. I want to say I lived every day in the moment and didn’t yell or get tired or order too much take out.

But I can’t. All I can say is that every parent- teacher or not- is heading into September with that same feeling. The feeling changes as they age- but it’s always there. And I suspect it’s there for summers when they aren’t even down the hall from you. Summers when they are snuggled in their own beds somewhere with their own kids having their own summers.

But I do have this. Your memories are better documented than any summer you ever lived as a kid. There are more pictures, more videos, more moments, more memories, waiting for you in a little box you carry around each day. You can choose to head down that memory lane in the dead of winter or maybe in some lonely July in 2035. And you can live it as if it was yesterday, as if it didn’t happen so fast you lost track. You can live each sacred summer you had again and again. Though it’s surely not the same, it’s something.

Because summer in it’s freedom and in its departure from routine and rules- it taught you who you were as a parent- it taught you who your kids were- what they needed, what they valued, and gave little peeks of who they were going to be.

It taught you that some memories will be panoramic ones, spanning whole vacations, whole Julys, whole camping trips. Long threads that you can hold onto a little tighter, a little closer, and you can be a little less teary as you head into another 10 months before your next sacred summer begins.