entirely too early, if you ask me

but no one did, though everyone seems to agree with me. school started for all underaged ashevillians this week, including my two. the words, "when i was a kid," and "never until after labor day" flew thick about my head and shoulders everywhere i went wednesday. i was flogged by other people's memories and offended sense of the sanctity of summer, as though it was i who had decreed a premature end to long days of slack and longer nights of perusing youtube and checking out random myspace pages. we did manage a few days at the end of forced marches up waterfalls and mandatory fun at swimming holes and long pebbly creeks. i think that next summer, there will be more marching and less youtubing.
my memories of summer always include long visits to grandma and grandpa's, the eerie light of the silent sentinel in my aunt theresa's bedroom window, and more trips to the beach than one could shake a piece of driftwood at. the beginning of school brings back the smell of textbooks, the salty grit of erasers, and the melancholy description of fall from charlotte's web, with crickets chanting, "summer is over... summer is dead."
this year was more momentous than most, as guthrie started high school at asheville high. my boy is in 9th grade. against all predictions and queries from well-meaning gadflies, i do not feel old. i am, however, astounded by the bigness of him. the word "size" simply does not do him justice. i am constantly surprised by the expansiveness of his personality and the magnitude of his very bones. his appendages look like saplings, twisting and writhing in his own personal cyclone as he hurtles from place to place. but, oddly enough, there seems to be a stillness at his center. he is capable of sitting down and having conversations, spread from one end of the porch to the other sprawled across a deck chair as he holds forth on his chosen topic. he will pause before leaving to hug me and tell me he loves me and kiss me on top of the head. he calls me mama. my own high school freshman. i am amazed.
sadie, too, grows more beautiful every day. she is lucky i am not a wicked stepmother, or that huntsman would have his work cut out for him, and she would have to get over her irrational fear of dwarves. i don't need a magic mirror to tell me that by the time sadie makes it to high school, i may not feel old, but i will probably have a full head of white hair! (s'okay. it looked grand on helen hayes.) her intensity is matched only by her determination to be completely indeterminate. decisions are anathema, but cannot be made by anyone else, especially not me! i feel like king arthur in the "holy grail" whenever i require that she decide what she will eat for dinner or wear to school. "look, she's oppressing me! o, now we see the violence inherent in the system!" and yet... she is still my little girl. for all her awkward striving toward independence, i look at her and see the pensive, unearthly child that she was, reading the newspaper in the cockpit of our sailboat home. i see the baby in the ladybug suit, planning her next breakout into the back yard. she is herself indeed, but still very much my own.
and so the year wears on. school will wash through our house like a tidal wave, rearranging schedules and social lives until next summer, when it will ebb, leaving us with another long, hot stretch of not a lot to do. until then, cool weather cometh. sweaters await. and camping season starts in the fall.
enjoy.
lovepeace
heather