With a week left, I shouldn’t be writing about the end of summer quite yet, but the truth is, I smell fall. Friday Aug. 1 was the last day for most of our summer lunch sites, and that was a sad, rude awakening for me.

Before heading to the office that morning, I went to a site to drop off equipment for the kids to watch a movie. I got to know this particular site pretty well over the summer and I was saddened by watching the kids wrestle and play and talk and joke with each other, all together, already at the site at 9am.

Each site is very, very different. At some sites the kids just come for lunch and leave when they’re finished. At some sites, like this one, the site director took on 200% more responsibility than they are paid for and transformed the site into a sort of summer camp, encouraging the kids to come each and every day, all day long

Now that the program is over, I know the kids won’t have a place where they can meet up with all of their summertime friends. The kids played in as much harmony as kids can with each other, different ages, races, genders, and it pains me to know that for the next few weeks they won’t be playing and learning together anymore. In a few short weeks, they’ll be returning to school where the invisible borders that school age children draw around themselves and their friends will once again separate them from one another, and this giant group of eclectic children who have turned into a family of friends will cease to exist…

The children, though, had an exciting last day. They watched a movie projected onto the wall of the gym and had a pizza party, a reward from CHA and The Collective Genius for completing program-evaluation surveys. All summer, the group had been nurturing two tomato plants, and on the last day, the site director gave them to me, along with a giant Thank-You poster the kids made.

As summer ends, my fellowship concludes, and school starts, I’m thankful that I can take a little bit of the community that was created by the great kids and staff at this site…My job is so rewarding!