Darkness Follows

Well, it's that time of year again...the beginning of the end of summer - August. As people can probably tell, I look forward to the end of summer as if I were going to be hanged. I wait for summer all year and in New England and upstate New York, it is so brief that I want to enjoy every minute of it. This year, as in past years, it has been a pipe dream.

When I moved and had no immediate job to look forward to, I thought: "I'll have the whole summer to myself, I'll read and think and take the kids on all sorts of cool daytrips in our new state and really enjoy it before I look for work." Here is the reality: June - rainy, abnormally cold, July - rainier, and abnormally cool, me - I've read so much I think that I might be "read out" and the kids are getting more and more like caged animals turning on their young as we are low on money and can barely afford to go to the food store, let alone fill the car with gas and trot around upstate NY. I guess I am back to that old saw: "the more things change, the more they stay the same." I've moved, am not working, have gotten away from some of my MA issues but I am now repeating many of them out here in NY. Sigh.

Do I anticipate that I will always be poor? Is this why I am so nearly always scraping by on a few bucks until the end of the pay period? Is this a self-fulfilling prophecy? I'd better start to think about this as it is getting old, real old. I suppose I could be working - I might have found a job as a chambermaid at one of the local motels, or in a convenience store, or right in the local food store, but at this stage of my life, I know that while those jobs will bring in money to satisfy my immediate needs, they won't even touch my intellectual ones beyond the first few weeks as I struggle to learn the job. Is it better to squeak along on what we have or should I just take anything, anything so as to relieve the money problem. I haven't figured that one out yet. But if I do, I'll let you know the results.

But anyway, as I was saying, August is here and my idealized summer is almost over. The problem with August is that it sneaks up on you. One minute it was June and summer stretched endlessly before me, the next it is August and my time is almost up. Whatever happened to July and the vacation I took in it? July seems to roar by at the speed of light - it's gone before I even had time to register that it was there.

To add insult to injury, I just noticed the other night that the summer daylight is shrinking. During the height of it, out here in NY in June, it was definitely light until 9pm and a little later. Now, I noticed that at 8:15 it is as light as it was in June at 9:15 and with that comes the awful dread of the darkness that follows as the months go by. The light going away sneaks up on you, it really does. My months of most discontent tend to be ones which lead into or follow the winter darkness. I am mournful in August over summer's end coming, bleak in November over the loss of further daylight when daylight savings ends as well as the impending winter, and downright depressed in March when even though daylight savings is back, the weather is still winter-cold and shows no intention of changing.

But I'd best go out and enjoy the rest of the summer, it won't be back for awhile. At this point, we have been able to stretch 3 days together without rain which is an absolute miracle this year. I need to redo my thoughts on this summer and put them into a more workable scenario - one which coincides with my pocketbook and my children's needs. Maybe we got what we needed in this year of our move, a summer in which we stayed home, laid low, and just hung out - together. The seasons can work in mysterious ways if you let them.