Endings/Beginnings

[thisnewday]

Somehow I didn't see the summer ending this way. But the sudden turn in weather has been impossible to ignore. Two days ago, we had the second rainiest day ever recorded for Central New York. And the suddenly-cooler nights, drawing down the warmth of following days, have driven home the reality of it as well.

So the tan that burned its way into my too-fair skin, a few short weeks ago in spring, has already begun to fade. And those last few times, that should have been ours to wade up over the sand bars at the west end of the lake, have instead been lost to unacceptably high bacteria counts and subsequent beach closings.

A year ago at this time, I wrote about being on Verona Beach for the very last day of the season, about the little boy and I watching the lines of bouys being dragged up onto the shore, their corkscrew-shaped moorings pulled out of the sandy bottom. Now I'm thinking that, even if they say the water is OK, we won't risk going in again this close to the start of school.

But what's also different is that, instead of looking ahead to next spring and the beach days presumed to follow after it, we've focused more on the coming days of fall. A week or so ago, I asked Little Jay to take just a minute each day to think about school, to think about being a bright little kid in a brand new class and about the fun things he might be doing.

Following a terse re-statement of his well-known and deeply-held conviction that "School is NEVER fun," he walked away.

A few minutes later, he came back and said, "Two plus two is four."

"What?" I said.

"Two plus two is four," he repeated. "You told me to think of something about school and that's it," he said. And, having thus made his point, he again walked away.

Not exactly what I'd had in mind. Which, I suppose, one might take to mean that beginnings won't necessarily be the way that you pictured them either...

LPK
LiveJournal
8.25.2010