It is the last day of vacation. “I’m bad with transitions,” I announce to my family, as if that is actually a thing.

I say it confidently, hoping that they will think I am speaking with the diagnostic authority of an old nurse, which they know better than to question. I hope that it will sound like something that people–preferably the smart and sensitive artist-people–are, instead of what it really is: a poor and totally unofficial, completely made-up-by-the-non-nursing-me excuse for the sulky moodiness that overtakes me in times of change, and at the end of seasons and school years, visits and vacations.

It’s unreasonable, and besides that, it’s kind of selfish. It’s downright immature. I know. I know I should just be grateful. I knowthat it will be great to sleep in our own beds, that fall is also beautiful, that the routine of the school year will…