September 1st

It's September 1st.

It was also near 100 today and will be all weekend. 

But I pulled out my favorite bookmark anyway. A friend who was a neighbor who moved to Maine made it for me. It reminds me of her, of New England, and even of my Grandma J who use to send me check boxes of waxed fall leaves. Memories are strange things. Both beautiful and hard, welcomed and dreaded.

Yesterday I found a box I had been looking for. It had pictures (real, analog, printed out photos) from the 1990s-2004. Pictures from middle school, high school, college, marriage, and babies. Other lives I've lived. Other friends and family either no longer here or just no longer quite so mine.

Beautiful and hard. Welcomed and dreaded.

I picked up this book at the library not quite sure I was ready for it but interested none the less. Its set in 2020, about quarantining...did your chest tighten just a little at that thought or did you smile? Beautiful and hard, welcomed and dreaded.

I enjoyed it actually, the book. I read the bulk of it on the beach by the lake. But then finished it in bed. Maybe not the best idea...my mind whirled for quite a while after. My sleeping tincture not really touching it. Do you like a story that is all wrapped up at the end or one that leaves you wondering? Imagining? Whirling? 

What memories are left form 2020? Longing for the quiet, still pace life ground to a halt at? The uncertainty and fear? The sadness and loss? I have all of them but somehow I still find some longing for the screeching halt. Within all that sadness I still have some longing. I don't really understand it. I lost two people in 2020. One to the pandemic and one to another sad sickness. It was horrible to not be with family and friends but also it was nice to not have any one expect anything of me as I grieved. Beautiful and hard, welcomed and dreaded.

But I guess that is life isn't it.

My children grow and it is beautiful and hard.

The seasons turn and it is welcomed and dreaded.