Going Steady

Enough of the Arid X-tra Dry.  I'm ready for blankets and pants.  Heck, I'm even ready for socks.  

What is Fall, if not some kind of seasonal antidote to all that is dead and dry and far too sunshiny?  Driving by Woods Park this evening, I wondered how all those Midget Football players were holding up, their bodies bruised by the cracked earth, their skin bloodied by the long fingers of sturdy, dead grass.  My guess is that they've come to fear the earth more than the opponents standing opposite them.

I am ready for the cool steadiness of a new chapter,  cicadas be damned. 

The ironic thing about relentlessness--whatever form it takes--is that it leaves me hungry for something old and reliable.  Like Allison's morning concerts.  True,  5:30 a.m. is a bit early to be pounding on the ivories--just ask the neighbors--but her vocal escapades have become a nursery rhyme to me, lulling me into a happy place where everything is right with the world.

Whatever darkens her teenaged doors, it is shooed away with the lilt of her singing voice and, for a few minutes, at least, all is right with the world.

So, too, has Finn's enthusiastic love become a tonic in my days.  Utterly devoted to his family, and infinitely more entertaining than anything on prime-time T.V,  Finn reminds me that joy is the thing.

And the morning sky reminds me that this life of mine is small enough to be manageable, whatever the pressures I perceive.  At 5 a.m., the eastern sky sparkles, Venus and Jupiter duking it out for top honors, while the stars of Casseopia, stretching out into a languid san-serif "w",  wink at me from the north.

Many days, I do not know if there is a God or an afterlife, but these steady threads in my life--the music of my daughter's voice, the boundless energy of Finn, and the certainty of the planets and stars--remind me that I don't have to know everything.  Maybe it isn't even mine to know.

It is enough to show up and pay attention.  How else, after all, could we catch the moment when summer cedes to fall and the Linden leaves start to bleed yellow, certain that change is just around the corner?