I have always measured time not by the turning of calendar pages from one year to the next, but rather by the beginning of a school year.
Maybe it’s a vestige from having spent the better part of 2 decades in the educational system.
Maybe it’s my stubborn reticence to return to the monotony of obligations and expectations, alarm clocks and routines. God I hate routine.
Maybe it’s because I am a 7 year old trapped in the body of a 42 year old who relishes in the lazy days of summer, the heady smell of sun tan lotion and chlorine, and the simple pleasures of letting adventure find you.
Maybe it’s that my oldest is 11 now and I am all too keenly aware that he has fewer summers left with me than he has already had and, as each one ends, my heart grows heavier than before.
Maybe it’s because my dad died on a July evening four years ago and, for me, the smell of salt air will inexorably be linked with the feral need to hold tight to those I love.
Whatever the reason, the beginning of school has always felt like an ending, not a beginning.
But the truth is, our stories do not have one beginning or one end, although books deceive us into believing this two dimensional rubric.
In reality, each moment is comprised of microcosms of beginnings and endings that cross each other, knit together, and break apart.
In the last month I have had friends send their babies to school for the first time and others drop off their teenagers in a college dorm room for the first time.
Both represent an ending of the life they knew and a beginning of a new one.
I suppose that is the way I should look at things. As chapters that signal both a beginning and an end. A death and a rebirth.
And if I can do that, maybe I can see that this time of year isn’t so different from the summer mornings I love. Waiting for your next adventure to find you.
Please friends. Please promise me you’ll remind me of this on an August evening 7 years from now when I give Jack a hug and reluctantly close his dorm room door behind me, knowing that whatever adventure is waiting to find us, we will have to do it on our own instead of together.
#LoveHard
#BeginHarder
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