Here we are. The end of summer 2013. High school football (and volleyball) is back, sweaty and raucous. I’m getting the classroom ready. At night there’s a nip in the air.
It has been this way for as long as I can remember. School looms up and summer starts to fade, and with it there is that sadness that accompanies the death of the warm season, the time of vacations and slow living, of relaxed moments and cold beer.
In its place comes the inevitable return to schedule and routine. There are set wake up times, bedtimes, and the unstoppable forty minute juggernaut that is a school day sandwiched in between. We leave the carefree moments behind us, like footprints on a beach, and shrug on our warmer clothes, our gloves and hats, and brace ourselves for the run to the holidays. Beyond December, well, that’s another cold story.
This year I am particularly nostalgic for the summer of 2013, and will continue to be so for years to come. A lot has happened to me in these few months, and it has made me reflective (well, I don’t really have time to be reflective, as you’ll soon see, but it sounds good). The event of the summer, bar none, was getting engaged. I can only hint at the surge of emotions that I experienced in mid-July. Yes, she said yes. Yes, I was a nervous wreck, not because I thought she would say no, but that asking someone to marry you- to share your life completely- is perhaps the biggest thing you can ask of another human being. I have vowed to not discuss my personal life here, so I’ll stop, but let it be known that my world completely and totally changed on that beach in Harwich. And I am forever grateful of the person, and the journey, and the joy that I know is yet to come.
But with the joy comes the stress, of course. We’re planning a fall wedding- fall 2013. Yes, quick, for many good and right reasons. But yes, also, that that ups the stress level about ten notches. Then add in a quick sprinkle of her moving in (very, very soon), and the requisite cleaning out, rearranging, and making room
that accompanies it, a dash of my daughter returning to college (yes, I’m sad-again), and a pinch of her daughters moving out of state (yes, she’s sad), stir in a heavy dose of Getting Ready for School, and you have a stress casserole to top most. There are lots of moments where a glass of wine on the deck has been a welcome reprieve from it all.
But this is just whining. Life continues to move at its crazy pace, whether my life is in turmoil or not. Many summers have passed with nary a discernible drama to write about. I’m relishing this time in my life- stress and all- because it marks a new path, a new journey with someone I love very much. Years from now, this blog post will probably be the best memory trigger I’ll have to remind myself of the crazy end to this summer vacation. And that will be just fine with me.
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