My dad loves to talk about his adolescence and young adulthood. He’s got great stories of all of his early jobs, most notably working at his grandmother’s vacation cabins and shop, the Kittery-York Drive-In, and Mount Snow ski resort. But he decided to be proactive and enlist in the Air Force in 1966.

As much as my dad loves hard work, he did not love being in the service, although he made the best of it and has a lot of stories about that, too. His favorite one is to share his early mindset about joining the military. “I just kept thinking about 1970, when I’d be out. It felt so far away.” And then the punchline: “And now 1970 is fifty years ago!”

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Wow! Eleven. Last year you were double digits, but this year, you’ve got three syllables!

Eleven is a great age. You’re still a kid. You’re still allowed to play on the playground. And at the same time, you’re also very capable. You can play a musical instrument, you can build insanely complex LEGO structures, and you can express sophisticated ideas.

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The last day of school was always sometime in June — June 16, maybe, or June 21 if there had been a lot of snow days — and that was it. It’s finally warm outside, there are finally leaves on the trees, and you’re finally free. A perfect transition from one grade to the next, with a nearly three-month buffer between the two.

The feeling of absolute freedom has stayed with me. No obligations, no dangling threads. As an educator, I follow the rhythms of the school year, but I no longer get to experience a clean break in which all of my projects end at the same time. Three-month vacations are a thing of the past as well, sorry to say.

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A generation of kids, used to marching from one highly structured activity to another, is learning the magic of being bored.

With virtually every after school activity canceled, they have so much free time that they have gotten their fill of Netflix and video games. They’re looking for something else.

Ray is building computers, piece by piece. Chloe is baking obsessively. Emma is gardening. Kate is learning audio recording techniques. Anna is coding. Rose is drawing for hours on end. Sam is building weird robots out of recycled components, and Daniel built a table out of wood and epoxy.

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I’m spending spring in Maine for the first time in many years. I’m looking forward to blooming lilacs and chestnut trees, which are still several weeks away. Meanwhile, the the first sign of spring arrived a few weeks ago along with the melting snow: the peepers.

From late March or early April, you can hear the high-pitched singing of this tiny frog rising from ponds and marshes all over New England. Even when the air is chilly and the trees still look like a bunch of sad sticks, the peepers signal that warmth and green will eventually return. The commencement of the peeper orchestra was especially comforting this year — at least some things are still happening as scheduled.

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