By Mike Kerrigan
What a glorious time of year. Summer’s end nears like an approaching ship on the hazy horizon. Hints of a crisp autumn begin to present themselves, especially at dawn. And my two high-school-aged sons are desperately trying to complete their summer reading before classes begin.
For a parent, the last part is what makes these days so marvelous. Finn, 17, and Jack, 15, a senior and sophomore, respectively, each suddenly have the studious mien of a Haverford English major. One walks by me clutching Melville, then the other passes clasping Dickens. I’m smiling ear to ear.
Have they had all summer to tackle their assigned reading? Of course they have. But Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are just getting to it now. Why? Because there were lakes to be swum in, mountains to be hiked, older siblings to be visited, sports to be played and, in fairness, summer jobs to be done. Only now do I see my boys, who put the pro in procrastination, knuckling down and filling our study with that new-book smell.
To be clear, this isn’t a failure of marketing by their school. The program isn’t called End of Summer Reading, Nice if You Can Get to It Reading, or Best Crammed Over Three Days in August While Jacked on Mountain Dew Reading. It’s called Summer Reading, a compound noun phrase that tells precisely what to do and when to do it. Pretty straightforward.
To my knowledge, neither has enrolled in a speed-reading course or shown proficiency in pace of perusal. But as the clock ticks down and a clemency call from the school seems a most unlikely reprieve, Finn is finally asking what “Call me Ishmael” means, while Jack wonders how it can be at once the best of times and the worst of times.
I’d come down on them for not giving priority to summer reading, but I was no better in my teens. They are boys, with all that entails. Given their Irish heritage, though, I trust there’s a love of letters bred deep in their bones that will, as rock band Ozark Mountain Daredevils nicely put it, shine when it shines.
But those same Gaelic roots cause them to chafe under the perceived undue authority, however slight, of a summer reading mandate. Their temperaments are gloriously ungovernable in the way G.K. Chesterton meant when he wrote, “The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad, for all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad.” They’re hotblooded colts that don’t want to be broken.
Alas, these are my last two high-schoolers, so I can’t do much more to encourage summery scholarship in them. But hopefully someday I’ll have grandchildren, and they most likely will inherit this dominant family trait of stubbornness. Perhaps for them there is hope.
Here’s my plan: I will get hold of their school’s summer reading lists before the grandchildren see them. Then, I’ll recast them as books that they are absolutely and positively prohibited from reading anytime over the course of the summer.
If they’re anything like Finn and Jack, that reverse psychology should do the trick.
Mr. Kerrigan is an attorney in Charlotte, N.C.
Kinda like your article was fun summer reading ... write on dear scribe