All Good Things Must End

We woke up this morning to dark, dreary, rainy skies.  We’ve had a lot of those this summer and normally I welcome the quiet that a rainy day brings, a brief respite from the physical labor that gardening and yard maintenance and everything else that summer lays at our feet.  But today felt especially dark and heavy.  The rain beat out a perfect tempo to the gloominess that comes from knowing summer is wrapping up.  School starts in two days.  It’s inevitable and so is the feeling that comes with it.

 I’m ready.  I’m not ready. 

It goes by so fast.  All good things do and summer is one of those good things.  One day…. yesterday, I think….. last school year was ending. Then summer sailed by in a blur of ice cream and freeze pops, fresh produce that I walked outside and picked from my very own garden, swimming and boating, long evening walks ‘cause that’s when it’s coolest, staying up too late and skipping the boy’s baths some nights because it’s too late, letting the boys sleep late just because I can.  Now we’re here, it’s today, the very last night of summer break. Tomorrow is a school night and just like that it comes to an end. 

School is hard for Moise.  He doesn’t love it.  He has been so peaceful, so quietly content all summer.  No frustration.  No agitation.  No agression.  School brings all of these things out of him.  Transitioning back to school, separating himself from me is always brutal.  I’m bracing myself for what’s coming but it makes me want to cling, just a little longer, to summer. 
I’m not ready.

  This past week we’ve been squeezing out every last bit of summer fun. 

I want to remember this summer.  That this was the year that Kruz turned four and one day I turned around and realized that he’s lost the baby look and really, truly looks like the toddler he is.   I want to remember that this was the summer that he hummed song after song as he played. I want to remember the countless walks the older kids and I have taken around the lake.  That this was the year we learned to wake board.  The many hours spent in my sister’s pool, Kruz just brave enough to sit on the steps and Moise holding his breath under water so long it scared people who’ve never seen him swim. I want to remember all the things that so often get lost in living. 

Yesterday, as Jamee and I walked along the riverfront with the boys the graffiti spoke to me.  It’s hard, so hard to send them back to school but I know, no matter what, they will be loved. Somehow, somewhere, sometime, they will touch someone this school year.  They will make an impact on someone’s heart and leave their stamp upon someone’s soul. They will be loved because they are love. 

I’m ready.

God is good, all the time.