Sometimes I feel so sad that summer has to come to an end. I love the realities of Fall---yellow leaf-light, football, woodsmoke---but I've always had a hard time enjoying things with the impending doom hovering overhead. It's the same reason I like Friday better than Sunday, Spring better than Fall, Christmas Eve better than Christmas. Sam reminds me that if we don't call 3:00 p.m. "almost-night," we also shouldn't think of Fall as "almost-winter." And certainly not late summer as "almost-almost-winter." So I'm trying not to. I lay outside on the grass with Junie the other night while everybody played with the Stomp Rocket Sebby got for his birthday, and watched a storm roll in over the mountains. The silent flashes of lightning were beautiful, and I thought about how it's not so bad, waiting for the rain to come. I need to remember that the cycles work all the way around---rain brings snow brings winter brings spring. Storms come, and they have their own beauty, and then they pass by and there's beauty in that too.
Anyway, it's still summer and there will be nights like these---many of them.
We peeled these socks off of her when we went inside. There were THREE SOCKS on that foot. (Sebby's socks.) Three!!
These clouds look like the Aurora Borealis.
Biggest stomp ever
Junie against an ominous sky
(Abe=sympathy jumper)
Sympathy jumping is awesome. That just made my day!
ReplyDeleteI saved you to the almost end. I am doing nothing today but reading, dipping into lives I have taken on like they were old professor sweaters - only a few blogs I read, but I seriously love the people who write them, and mostly (because not all are a joy to read) am happy in anticipation when I see the numbers pop up after their names in my reader.
ReplyDeleteBut this has been a dense time. And not unlike the Thomas poem. For me, it's always Hopkins' Spring and Fall. This last few months that would have been summer if there had been no wedding looming at the end of it (they're supposed to be fun, right? Weddings and getting ready? - but they are a far cry from preparing for - say - Christmas). And having all the weirdly clumped together domestic emergencies that cost us so much money -
These months that all should have felt just the way your evening photo study just let me feel for a fleeting moment. And I think I can feel the fact that I'm almost sixty now. It makes me heavy and disinclined to jump, or even to sit quietly in the evening (as though we, so near the bogs down here as to say we are part of them, can simply sit in an evening. Ah - there's the jumping part - and the slapping and dancing and stamping and finally spraying).
This has not been summer. Summer belonged to me when I was twelve. Now it belongs to irrigation. I need to hold still enough, Mar, to be able to feel - something. Anything sweet. Anything like I used to. Instead of this darn (not what I first wrote) load of grown-up-ness. I sent Ginna home yesterday. But even having her here isn't the same as it was - all babies and boys now - and who's to say that's not better in its own way?
But it has not been summer. And so I cannot feel the slightest regret that Autum is setting on. In fact, I rush to it. I open my arms and wait for it to wash over my face. Because then there is no reproach in being wedged into my corner of the couch writing this instead of being out there - at least working with my horses (who would rather eat summer than trot in it).
Still. I thank you for that one moment of old summer - gloaming - evening. If only there had been fireflies.
I didn't leave the n off autumn on purpose.
ReplyDeleteK--"a dense time"---that's such a good way to describe those times when you hardly have time to experience anything, let alone reflect on it. Those times are hard for me--I have a hard time processing things when they happen too fast--but on the other hand the dense times also give you something to reflect ABOUT, when they are over.
ReplyDeleteSam always reminds me that we love autumn (or autum :)) and we will love the "autumn of life" when it comes, for its own reasons. But yes, I hate to think of my babies' weddings looming. Getting ready for MY wedding was fun, for me, but I am assuming---not for my mom? Hard and dense. Yes.
I love your comments.
Lovely lovely and sad too. I feel it all the time, especially as babies grow.
ReplyDelete