Already Here

I breathe in the quiet of this day, a welcome pause in the middle of a full summer. It is summer’s true middle, according to the calendar, though it feels more like summer’s end, according to life. In a matter of weeks I return to work, and the children return to school. That feels like fall.

We have all enjoyed summer’s pace. Steady and slow, marked by moments of work and moments of play, the break from lessons and structure has been good for us. The busy­ness has been of a different sort.

I thrived on projects getting done, the children enjoying pool or screen or friend time. A first in our family’s history was when everyone left an amusement park with the words, “best day ever,” on their tongue.

This lazy day is a gift, and I try to steward it as such. It is a literal and figurative Sabbath. Literal, because it is actually Sunday, and figurative, because I am choosing to fill it with all that brings rest to my soul and life to my heart. I read, write, ponder, and nap. I am still.

I owe the gift of this rest day to a summer cold. It crept up on me in the wake of an intense week, leading preschoolers during Vacation Bible School. My own four children were participants, as well. It was a family endeavor. It was also a re-­entry from the cozy confines of our humble abode into the germ pool of being in close quarters with small children and other people.

We all came away with some sort of summer cold, reminding us that fall is coming, and our immune systems will not boost themselves!

The Bible school backstory brings me to this space. The quietness of a screen free zone for the girls at home opens time for me to read and think and rest and write. I ponder how to welcome fall and the upcoming school year, while wondering how my husband and son are doing as they help adult children move to a city two hours away.

One is moving from one apartment to another across town. The other is moving back home for a season. A text alerts me that another will be here for coffee on his way home from his girlfriend’s house. She lives two hours northeast of here, his home is two hours south. Our’s makes a good half­way stopping point when there is time in transit. A new text follows shortly. He just saw one of my high school friends at Trader Joe’s.

I cannot make this up. I can only welcome it as the shifting of one normal to the next.

With the adult children moving further up and further into adulting, the younger ones take their place, leaving my feet planted firmly in the ground of middle age .