Day 191 - The Fall of Summer

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

~ Robert Frost

I've always loved this time of year, nearing the end of summer, closing in on autumn; especially in the north and especially with children anticipating a new school year. There is a bittersweet feeling about it, a calm excitement for the next season and a mellow melancholy as the days get shorter.

This feeling is exceptionally potent now as my children have not attended school in a year and a half, in the midst of growing pains, and a pandemic that has robbed them of some rites of passage in these formative years.

As I write this, I'm watching some crows stealing corn cobs from the back of our truck and I don't even feel like shooing them away - Hodor is occasionally barking at them, not even getting up as they're too high for him to reach, so they're teasing him about it and he doesn't mind at all. Enjoy the remnants of corn, crows! Winter's coming.

This time of year is a daily dirge of necessary jobs, cleaning up an endless supply of overgrown everything, purging sandy shoes and clothes and dusty ideas that are no longer fit to wear. I look forward to a new normal that will look very different from routines of the past. I have grown in a way that I hadn't thought possible at my age and it's because time stood still for awhile - even though many thoughts and people came and went, in and out of my world - There has been a great pause in my life, an inner space, like this time of year on an existential scale, and I'm sure it's not just me. I do believe the suspension of too familiar existence has been a necessary one.

It is this hiatus between before and after that will inform my life moving forward. The stripping away of things I used to think were important to reveal the essence of what is now, and probably always had been, actually relevant. It has come down to a simple and straightforward awareness that absorbs all those coming and goings of thoughts and people, where there is no need to get caught up in the fray.

The last week of summer for the kids, the end of August, has them working and preparing for the new year. They have each revealed a maturity and newfound enthusiasm for what lies ahead. The last time they were in school, they had cutesy lunch boxes and pencil cases. This year, they will pick their own supplies and pack their own lunches, and I will be there just to wave goodbye as they head off for the bus. Another sign that time marches on, I sink with memories and rise in possibilities, the ebb and flow of emotion, and recollect that nothing gold can stay.


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