08.18.20

After a week of chilly and very windy days, it’s summertime hot again.  Although we complain, it feels to me like the weather gods have given us more time.  Time to cling to ancient summer memories when life felt golden.  Time to remember life before Covid.  Time to just sit in the shade on the porch and read a new novel.  Maybe, I just have more time now, with family returned to their homes and vacationing friends back on the road.

I’ve been taking my final cup of coffee down to the beach in the mornings to sit on one of the big flat rocks.  Chatpeau always bounds down the lawn after me, and jumps on my lap, covering my white terry cloth robe in her black hairs.  We feel the sunlight come up over the mountains at our backs, illuminating the tip of the sailboat and slowly making its way down the mast, to the water.  As the boat gently bobs,  the shine sometimes gets dim and sometimes there is no reflection at all.  It feels very much like the swing of emotions all day long, as we go between dark and light.

My grandchildren are now returning to school in its various hybrids between online and in-person classes.  Both Joy and Rich are required to stand in front of their classrooms this week, in front of masked students who maybe stay far enough apart, who, hopefully, are not silently shedding a viral load, in a state that has now run out of testing capacity.  After restless nights, and the early dawn reading of bad news, these peaceful mornings at water’s edge are a balm to the soul, and remind me that every morning is a new beginning, a new chance, and the possibility for renewed hope.