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June 21, 2005

Summer's here--I'm for that

And how. It's the longest day of the year, and after this they start getting shorter again, but it's a gentle slide and we'll hardly notice until the end of August, when nature and the inevitability of rules and regulations bring the school year back.

I have waited for summer to come around again since last summer, which ended so abruptly with a precipitous drop into (as the song goes) "hopeless, bleak despair." But I feel a little better now--or at least I have the capacity to tell myself that I feel better, and I hope that in a while they are the same thing--and when I am on the lake or sitting on the dock or out in the sun I don't think "if only" any more. Or at least I don't think that all the time.

I gave myself a year to do this; to fall apart, to be consumed, to rage at the world, to bang my head on the floor, to wallow, to grieve. And while I know that I will not be completely better, or "over it," or a whole new person by the end of this summer, I will at least know what I didn't know last summer: that I could survive death. The seasons change, the light grows and dims, the year comes and goes, and here I still am.

What the end of summer will bring and what changes the end of summer will bring I think I know; but I don't need to talk about it yet, especially when the air is warm and the breeze is kind, the light is on the water and the world is green. And it's really summer.

Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)