Goodbye, Summer!

Today, as I sit here wearing a pair of white slacks for the last time this season, I am thinking about how quickly the summer has sped by and stare in disbelief at a newly turned calendar page... how on earth can it be September already?  Back in April, when my parents were visiting here, they bought us a small Black-Eyed Susan plantling... I remember the anticipation associated with its potential blooming as I set it into the garden. Well, that little plant took off and grew and bloomed with complete and glorious abandon; it didn't happen overnight but slowly, one day at a time, it got bigger and brighter and better! This plant turned out to be so much more beautiful and vibrant than I had even dared to hope; that's the same way I feel about this summer's passing. Let's face it, all time seems to speed by at breakneck velocity the older we get, but these last few months have been filled with happy days and priceless moments that defined my summer of 2014 as one even better than I had ever dreamed possible! Labor Day has always represented a major shift in my mind; either it was the end of summer for me and a new school year or it was that for our children when they were still at home. New schedules for fall, new classes, and the end of lazy, summer days used to bring a certain and distinct sadness to my heart and mind.

This is a photograph of my own daughter in 1981 on her first day of Kindergarten, looking at it, even today, still brings a lump to my throat.  My own children returning to school was always a bittersweet day for me when they were growing up, I wasn't a Mom who looked forward to summer's end, not one bit. Tomorrow my oldest grandson will sit in a Kindergarten classroom and this little girl, now the mother, will experience those same emotions that I felt back on this day 33 short years ago. Change happens, it's inevitable, but it happens ever so gradually, every single day! There are those markers that signal the transitions in a BIG way... like Labor Day screaming "summer's end" in our faces, or the first day of a new school year, but also happening at the same time, almost invisibly, are those quiet, daily, transitions as each hour and day slide one into the next. All of a sudden I've become acutely aware of time's passing as I stand, looking back at a string of yesterdays and realizing how precious every day, month and season has been... and how, just like that multi-bloomed Black-Eyed Susan demonstrated to me, they slowly combine and evolve to produce memories of days-gone-by that are so much more wonderful than I had ever even hoped that they would turn out to be!

Embrace today, change will occur tomorrow... it might be a big one or you may barely even notice it, but it will happen. This evening I'll hang my white slacks back in the closet one last time, it's my way of telling summer good-bye. I'm not sad anymore, though, today I am grateful. Why? Because today, on this last "official" day of summer, I find myself looking forward eagerly; ahead of me are a string of tomorrows that each hold the promise of something so much better than I can even imagine, or dare to hope.

Happy Labor Day... it's all good!

Life is Good!