not ready

summer is too fleeting and feels even more so when it comes only in fits and starts. we had a few really nice days...eating outdoors, playing outside, soaking up the sun and now it's back to rain, rain, rain. it's actually ok, as i have plenty indoors to do, but i want to be outdoors and there's lots to do there as well. i'm not ready to let go of summer. i'm just not ready.

strangely, this evening, after chilling us with a steady drizzle all day, the western sky was the most amazing shades of pink and orange. absolutely lovely! and somehow made even lovelier by the fact that it was still raining. the cold drops and warm sky were just those sort of opposites (like feathers and stones) that speak to my very soul.

at least this sunset was at 10:22 p.m., which means i haven't yet begun to feel the light's retreat, tho' it's been nearly a month since the solstice.  i'm grateful for that. i'm just not ready.

our pooka leaves tomorrow to visit friends and go sailing with them for ten days or so. i know she's going to have so much fun, but i'm going to miss her. i feel acutely that i need to enjoy her this summer, while she's this age - still a child, not yet a teenager. i want to hold onto that so tightly, at the same time as i know i cannot.

i'm just not ready.

in so many ways.

*  *  *

one of the coolest things i've seen in a long time. 

there's even more about it here.

what are you gonna remember?

as i said earlier, the lazy days of summer have begun. i have this melancholy sense that this is the last summer that sabin will truly play. she's a real tween now, but has enough of the child still in her to run and swing and do cartwheels across the yard. i so don't want to see that go.

she has a friend here from her old school where we used to live. they're having a great time together and i haven't heard a word of irritation between them (tho' it's early in their week together).

i suspect that she will remember these golden summer days...of getting to go down to the creek unsupervised with air mattresses and float downstream. of synchronized cartwheels across the lawn. of chasing chickens and trying to shoo them into their new enclosure. of watching YouTube on the iPad while snuggled up together in a nest of blankets and pillows that only two ten-year-olds can make. eating æggesnaps (egg yolk and sugar stirred into creamy, decadent smoothness). staying up late and giggling. getting a driver's license at legoland. spending the day at the beach. teaching bunnies to jump. the smell of freshly-mown hay. picking wildflower bouquets.

all of these things still done with childlike abandon.  no worries, no cares, just being in the moment.

there's a lot i could learn from that.

april snow

i was so dismayed yesterday as i drove into a small patch of snow flurries, just as i got near our new house. i was going to pick up the keys and drop off a few things. it seemed like a bad omen, that snow.

the house, now empty, seems forlorn. and i had another of those awful moments of the Enormity of the Project. since the first look at this house, we've been looking beyond what's there and concentrating on what we see in our minds - focusing on the potential and not the reality. but now that it's empty that reality is even more stark - sagging wallpaper, greying paint on the walls, low ceilings, the most awful silly putty color of paint on the kitchen cupboards (seriously unappetizing), i could go on and on. we have a five-year-plan for what we want to do with it, but five years is five years and we will live in it in the meantime. and that's just how it is.

but even more overwhelming was a sense of sorrow hanging over the house. the family we're buying it from is moving because their dreams and hopes didn't turn out as they planned and it had become a place they associated with those broken dreams. although i know this doesn't mean it will be a sorrowful place for us, that sadness is hanging there in the air. and it was very nearly physically palpable yesterday when i stopped by in the sudden snowstorm. 

i can tell you that next week, although we're not going to paint and fix everything (those pink cupboards have got to go), i can't wait to open all of the windows and let in fresh air and sunshine. fresh air and sunshine should go a long way towards chasing the sadness away, but some friends have suggested a ceremonial exorcism cleansing and i may actually have to do something along those lines. we have to chase out the previous sadness and replace it with our energy and happiness. and while i feel confident we can do that, things were looking a little blurry there for awhile in yesterday's april snow.