Sunday, August 19, 2007

This is How it Begins...

...with a single, delicately tinted leaf laying on your front yard. Not having seen one for nine months it's as though you never have, and you pause for a moment to crouch over it and admire it's subtle merge of gold and red. The sun is warm on your back, and the cicadas are singing in the trees around you. If the children are near you call them to look at it with you, and they run over on bare feet to exclaim in wonder too, as though leaves that turn from glossy green to sunset are something they have never seen before either.



















You straighten up and squint into the top of the sweetgum tree to reassure yourself that all is still summer, and the tree obliges you by waving it's thick, fully leafed branches against the cornflower blue sky. Satisfied that autumn is definitely not on it's way you return happily to the illusion that summer lasts forever.



















But this is how it begins, this is the beginning. And also, the ending.
Tomorrow my babies start full day kindergarten, and my life as a stay at home mother - almost thirteen years, ends. This day has been coming for years, in all those small ways, and every time a moment came I would delight in its beauty, but not really allow myself to see that the accumulation of such moments would lead to a new season. And tomorrow I'll probably ask myself the same questions I ask when fall becomes an undeniable reality.
Where did the summer go?
Did I relish it properly?
And did I really take time to just enjoy its fleeting beauty?

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