the difference a year makes

One year ago today, I wrote this post. It's incredible how much has changed in year, on so many levels. I felt so collected last year when I wrote that post. I remember sitting on my porch, so satisfied with the newness of understanding the need to pause and reflect on my own connection to creation; my new love for the changing of seasons and the evidence before me that Fall had come. I remember a great sense of peace and readiness for the coming school year and the things that I would learn and the ways in which I would grow in relationship with others and with God. I had time for tea.

And this year, an entire year later, I feel greater than before. I feel more connected to creation, more in love with the seasons and more well-rounded and balanced in my need to renew that connection. I've had very few occasions when I needed a grand gesture to help me get by. For the most part, I've been able to integrate small gestures to help me cobble a new way of life; a new set of priorities. I fully participated in summer-- so much so that it is gone already and I am holding a new acorn in my hands and wondering where the time flew to.

This weekend, I spent Labor Day in Binghamton, NY. I was there to visit someone special and to attend the wedding shower of dear friends. The weather while I was there shifted from what we had been experiencing in DC: from hot and humid to mild and beautiful and then suddenly downright cool, and not just during the nights. I had checked the forecast and knew to pack a sweater, but even still I was not prepared for the shift in seasons. Leaves had already begun to fall and the ground was already covered in acorns that have only just begun to fall here. There was a smell on the breeze that made me feel ready for pumpkin carving and recall the late October-early November feeling of being wrapped in school, preparing for Halloween and then Thanksgiving. My recent experiences in DC responded with a desire for apple cider, sweaters and warm blankets, and apple picking!

It was a disconcerting experience, though I feel certain there is little that can be experienced that is more lovely than Fall in New York. I simply am not ready this year for Fall to have come. I am not at peace with another year of school, and not prepared for changes there. Although I have felt ready to leave this place and I have great big plans for what comes next (scores of them, really), I suddenly feel unready to be done with summer in this place. Unready for a final fall. Unready, despite my grievances with being a perpetual student, to start my descent to commencement. I feel unprepared, I feel behind, and I want my beautiful summer back! I demand it.

Perhaps I am influenced by a summer paper that must be written tonight, and the sure knowledge that I do not want to write it, that I am tired and would prefer to do other things. That as the paper wraps up and gets submitted I am spending the last hours of my glorious summer on a dreaded assignment. Perhaps I am influenced by the magnitude of the summer I have had and the impact the events of the summer will bear on my future. Perhaps the fast passage of my favorite time of year-- gone in the blink of an eye-- is an indication of how life will be from now on: like some sort of response to falling in love. Couldn't I fall in love and drag out every day from now until eternity in sheer happiness and utter bliss? Does my level of contentment have to affect the speed with which my happiness passes before me?

Whatever the reasons, I am craving sweet summer. Fresh corn and boxes of tomatoes, hot summer days, lazy summer weekends. Free evenings for impulsive recreational activities. A slower pace and fewer students at work. More movies and sleeping in and less classwork and punctuality. I will miss traveling and visiting with old friends, I will miss the beach trips I failed to take this year, and the fireworks and the birthday candles and the trip to Waco which I did not take. I will miss the more intimate worship at Calvary, and I miss the Camp Fraser involvement that was not available this summer. I will miss picnics by the fountain in the sun. I will miss ice cream cones and Saturday mornings for brunch and trips to the farm stand. I miss reading for pleasure. I miss feeling free. I miss not being in class.

I am not ready for long sessions of trying to focus and restraining myself from surfing the internet, late nights writing mediocre papers I fake an interest in. I am not ready for the rush at the office which is already well underway, or the quickness with which a week is gone here. I am not ready for Refectory lunches or to say goodbye to Ashlinn. I am not ready for Fall. I am simply not ready.

And yet, it seems I do not have a choice. For although it was 95 degrees here today in DC, that Fall feeling I felt in NY will come to DC soon as well. And though I will miss the traditional elements of summer, I used this season to its fullest. I wrung the last drop out of summer in all the best ways. I don't have time for tea and front-porch sittin' this year, as there is that pesky paper to write, but I do feel content with where I am in life and my relationships in it. I did learn a lot, and I have changed a lot in the last four seasons, and I am grateful for what I will learn in the next four. Like last year, and the million things I did not get accomplished, but learned to take a breath from anyway, there will always be things that do not get done. But life will surprise you in the best possible ways. Maybe you'll spend an entire summer focused on something (someone) new that you couldn't possibly have planned, who will make those million things not matter at all. Who will make you wish for endless summers repeating the same. Who, even while you dread the the exchange of seasons without your permission, will make the new season greater than the old. Even if I am not ready, that is something to look forward to.