Wait a minute. What happened to summer? Seems like it was Memorial Day only last week, and now, Labor Day? I think it has something to do with my absence from the school scene. When you are going to school--as a student or a parent or a teacher--your life is defined by the quarter system and punctuated by vacations. Leave that system and you're like an eecummings poem--except even those have some internal structure. You can't even rely on the retail establishment to keep you on an even keel: the aisles are full of Halloween merchandise the day after the 4th of July, and I imagine Christmas stuff will arrive next week on the heels of the back-to-school clearances. The seasons have even disappeared from the grocery store. At this point we should be winding down from peaches and corn and tomatoes and moving into apple season, but, thanks to the wonders of modern technology and transportation, I can still buy strawberries and cantaloupes that should have disappeared in June.
I need to be grounded a little more in the real world. Establish more of a routine. Pay more attention. Slow things down enough that I can see the changes and not have the seasons zing by me like they've been fired from a slingshot. Maybe it's true what they say--that once you're over the hill, you pick up speed.
1 comment:
we are channeling each other - I write a post about the end of summer too...and how time slips by in the summer. Fall and Winter seemed more grounded, slow enough that I can keep up. Summer reeks of fizzy drinks and fizzy time.
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