Suddenly, Summer is Over

Vacation was the star on the horizon to which I fixed my gaze, and now it is over, and D is back in school, Keith will go back Monday, and SUMMER IS OVER.

Keith became Master of the One Match Campfire on this trip.

I made pancakes and they were good.

The girls spent all of their time in the River.

First Day of Seventh Grade

I walk down Kingwood Street to work every morning and when Dawn and the Mimosa Blooms all come together I know it is summer.  Unfortunately for me, most of my sunrises this year were obscured by rain clouds - I'm not complaining, I have a bounty of Spaceship Squash and Tomatoes because of the rain.  But I am a little disappointed, because I am a hot weather girl, and I had about 4 weeks this summer of weather that was warm enough for me not to wear a sweater.  This week, when I started back after our hiatus, it was no longer light out on my walk to work, and the Mimosa showed me her gigantic seed pods, and the last hurrah of her freaky pink blooms, and I could smell the stale beer/vomit odor that heralds the return of the WVU students, and I knew... SUMMER IS OVER.

Technically it doesn't end till the autumnal equinox, but practically, in this town at least, all sense of ease and peace that the long warm days conveyed has evaporated in a haze of pot smoke and booze fumes and Hummer exhaust.  As I walked home this afternoon, some new resident of Clark Street stood on his porch, chucking beer bottles from the night before in the general direction of the trash cans sitting on the sidewalk, sometimes making it, sometimes hitting the concrete with a resounding shattering of glass.  The little old man in my soul wanted to holler, "you know the city has curbside recycling, right? Put those bottles in the GREEN CAN MARKED RECYCLABLES!" But I said nothing, mostly because I do not trust myself to have a civil conversation with a kid who drives a car more expensive than my house, but also leaves broken glass all over the sidewalk.  I walked on home, past the newly broken window of the AstroVan at the corner of Cherry and Clark - The owner is a customer at the shop, he has a little kid, he put cardboard over the window till he can afford to get it replaced.  It rains almost every day here... SUMMER IS OVER

I made a new necklace with fishing line and some beads.

It has been a rough summer for me, in my brain - maybe I could go get my meds adjusted but I think I need to go hike more instead.  My kid is asserting her independence beautifully, although she mostly speaks to me in monosyllables and when I touch her things she yells "No!" at me as if I were a dog.  When I sit on the couch next to her to watch TV, she turns off her show and goes upstairs.  I just offered to make pancakes for breakfast and she went into the kitchen and made herself a bowl of cereal.  She does well in school and everyone says she is polite and kind and a pleasure to be around but I feel like I have failed somehow in the only job I ever had that was really important. This summer felt like the Universe saying to me "you are not Mother Material, You got one and she survived, but in spite of you, You do not deserve another."  That's how it felt.  But now SUMMER IS OVER and there has to be peace in there somewhere if I can just accept it.

Three is a Magic Number

snowflakes

sometime earlier this afternoon it started snowing. huge gigantic enormous clusters of snowflakes so outlandish they made me laugh out loud with joy. later walking home, the snow, now more normal looking, was still coming down heavy and wet and fast. even though things feel quieter in the snow, you can still hear the flakes clicking down against each other like ice cubes into a glass only under a microscope. it covered me up, half an inch of snow on my shoulders and scarf. i imagined just lying down in the hammock in my back yard and letting the snow bury me.


i found this bag of turnips in the crisper last week, and they had sprouted these lovely yellow fronds. so they went into the window, one at a time, and I watched the leaves turn green. they found the light, chlorophyll knows how to find the light in winter. they are smarter than i am, i think.