“Summertime is always the best of what might be.” -Charles Bowden
I know, I know, every Labor Day I fuss and whine, but here it is again-a summer sailed away without me on the boat and all I have to show for a summer lost are some mosquito bites. Today while I flip the calendar pages to September, yes I still do real calendars!, I think didn't I just turn those same pages to June? I am struck by time again... the time I never have to sit with summer, the time lost, the time I spend on so many things that just don't have my heart or my head but have to be done, the time to be with summer still.
Is it growing older that makes Summertime fly? How often in the past few days have you heard "Can you believe it is Labor Day?" NO! I CANNOT! Someone go find me June, July... A blink and suddenly the skies grow dark earlier, scarecrows and even bags of trick or treat candy are everywhere,leaves and acorns start to drop...and suddenly September.
Labor Day weekend of course always feels like an abrupt and an unwelcome end to summer. For me this year it is particularly unsettling as summer 2019 was just so wrong in so many ways. The weather caused my hair to look like a brillow pad , the news was, and is, a numbing continuous storm of anxiety and horror, and even the gardens of Camp MP lost their bloomin' heads-growing out of bounds like a jungle or in some spots showing no effort or joyful blooms where there should have been an abundance,as every critter ruled and burrowed and chomped away...and I was just plain grumpy along with it. I can't even count on two fingers when I got to just sit and do a summer day, lazy days with a book-in fact the pile of books that called in May remain unopened.
Can I get a Do-Over on summer 2019???
"Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language." -Henry James
I want to slow everything! down and not have to be here on Labor Day saying .."wait, wait, what happened to my summer?" It's a blur and I just want to sit for a bit and hold to "the best of what might be." Summer after all is supposed to be the time of year that everything moves like a snail , nothing much is scheduled of a serious nature during the summer months- everyone is away, or going away, or just coming back from being away...and in summer it is not only perfectly acceptable, but also fashionable, to be lazy and just sit with a book. Nights are slow in coming and have a special air with sounds that open windows welcome in-dogs barking, kids riding by on their bikes, night crickets, and of course baseball on the radio...
September in New England should not to be dismissed, the skies are glorious and the weather rides the change toward sweater weather. This weekend, however, is a marker, closing the door on "true summer" the season that gives us permission to Go Play Outside. With Labor Day we have to come in, toss the flip flops aside and put on "practical shoes" --we have to Go Back to School and back to our desks piled high with all the things we said we would get to "after Labor Day". Just this week there have been subtle signs of the season changing ... dry leaves turned on the trees, Mums filling the nurseries, Halloween cards on the racks and my favorite-the "plunking" of acorns as they fall and hit my neighbor's deck. Mother Nature is serious about her calendar even if I am not. I cling to summer well into November! when you will still see my flip flops by the back door.
Don't
get me wrong, I adore the fall- crisp air, glorious colors, tweeds,and crunchy knits, the scent of cinnamon and apples, piles of pumpkins, the whole New England postcard. Soon I will start digging out the tired blooms and replace them with happy faced fall
pansies and curly pink flowering kale.
I might even run for the needles and cast on some cables!!
I might even run for the needles and cast on some cables!!
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