I think this may be it; we have made it through the most painful summer in 50 years. It has felt like it, too, though I was lucky enough to escape the bulk of it. Just six weeks of relentless blaze has made me feel lethargic and irritated by the crippled landscape around me. There is a bleakness with drought that is hard to understand. It does not wipe out towns in a matter of minutes, nor does it break in half skyscrapers, instead it slowly extracts the life out of all the things around you. It reminds me of Scotland, in January, when the sun started setting at four and you pleaded with it to give you just a little more of its light.
But now, now I wake up and it is the second day of relief. There is a fall breeze that almost mimics a sacred howling and for a moment I can pretend that 90 degrees is as heavenly as 76 (the sick part being that I think it truly does feel like 76).
As humans, we love that things begin and end. Babies are born in unison with elders dying, flowers bloom then return to the earth, and we wait excitedly for them to resurrect again. We lament change, but really, it is what our life is driven by. How can we continually love the heat and childlike feel of summer when it has been that way for five months? We can not. We need change to start us up again, to regain our attention and our passion into something revitalizing. I need to let go of pools and BBQ and steaming cement in order to be part of something new. Never have I wanted pumpkin spice candles or hot soup and bread more. And when it ends, when my dear fall ends, I will miss it dearly, and when it returns it will be all the better because change makes me miss more ardently. Change makes me lament all the things I am scared I wouldn't love enough if they were mine always. Even my students show the benefit of change. In my classroom, students work harder and with more vigor when they know the activity will change in twenty minutes. They desire to be moved, to change their thinking, and I wonder if that way of thinking ever truly leaves us.
I suppose that is a normal thing to fear, not loving the steady things in your life (or perhaps I just like to pretend it is). What if I had everything I wanted, in my hands, every day, would I still love it so? Perhaps I would, or perhaps my affections would wander and get lost down the street, besotted with something just out of reach.
I already am remembering people and things fondly, as though when I had them they were utterly amazing. That guy, the one I know was not for me, is remembered now for the lovely words he rarely spoke, the way his arms wrapped around me when he chose to come to me at all. I am so good at these tailored lies it begins to store in my mind as truth. This, of course, is not how things were, and I must remind myself that change moves us forward because we need to move, and we must not turn our neck too far to what was. I believe something or someone is meant to stay with you, it would have.
The best part about change is that you never really know when it will sweep you away. One day you feel as though fall will never come, and then you are awoken by heavy, sultry winds and you step outside to the most delightful smell of crumbled leaves and cooler whisps of air. You are always given what you need, always provided with that vibrancy of change when you thought nothing could ever thrill again.
So I sit outside now, at my favorite coffee shop, letting myself get lost in the flashbacks of this new season, as I start to let go of everything summer placed upon me. I peel back the memories of summer until I am naked and new, awaiting all the sensational things that will find me this season.
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