August

August evening. Amos is making trains and mailboxes with his tegu blocks. He constructs something that he is using to pretend to cut grass on the rug. He asks me for a bucket, a pretend bucket. Here it is, I say, placing a pretend bucket near where he is working. Is it a tall one or a small one? He asks. Tall. I’m chimping the grass, he says. He likes to make up words and I am amused that his make-believe revolves around yard work.

Eowyn is in her bouncy chair, singing with all the might of her little lungs. We stop and look at her and she makes a sound like laughter, her first, although she seems to be laughing at nothing and we can’t get her to do it again. Outside the golden hour is approaching, so much earlier than it was a few weeks ago. Crickets chirp their steady background music.

Some days I am parched and thirsting for that elusive five minute of peace. Other times, Amos is outside cutting the grass with scissors or playing with beans on the kitchen counter (handily contained by a large plastic bin) and I can feel my whole being relax a bit with this break from answering questions or responding to pleas for help. Its not all bad, I do what I can to really appreciate the moments that are good. These moments are mixed into ever changing and ever lingering challenges swirled with never ending doubt (am I doing this right? I may never know).

I am happy to have a kitchen table full of food that we have grown. By grown, I mean we stuck some seeds and seedlings in the ground and let the heat of the summer and an occasional squirt with the hose do the work. But we have braids of onions hanging by the windows and I may even end up canning some of the tomatoes that are so abundant this year. We scattered a second planting of lettuce seeds and I hope we’ll be eating it in salads soon. I’ve come to realize that I feel happiest and most alive when surrounded by things I’ve made myself. I’ll be sad when the fall and the frost leaves us with nothing more in our garden plot.

I lose track of the days and hope summer will last at least another month until I see the calendar and it finally sinks in that September is next week. A new page of days doesn’t mean summer is over, no one in our house is going back to school, but I’m not ready to let go of this season. Time really does go by so much faster every year, summer seems just a blink between months of winter.

Until then there are more perfect breezes and blue skies to be enjoyed.