edge of the season

The summer is over - the laundry was out all day Monday and still not dry. That is, after all, how you know. Although E.B. White said in Charlotte's Web that it was actually the crickets. Do you all still have a special spot in your heart for Wilbur?

I do.

I remember once reading this toxic essay that said everyone grows up from Charlotte - like Fern. That we all forget Wilbur and his friends and learn to embrace financial advisors at cheese and wine events, look for eligible suitors and have a side of bacon without a thought ever devoted again to our dear pig.

I hated that essay.

In honor of loathing that piece, I read CW aloud in between bouts of trying to wrestle the text away from the babies, as the summer took its bow.

{No, lit majors, not wrestle the interpretation away...which has a beautifully evocative visual to it - literally, I was trying to get them to not eat the book}.

Goodbye summer we cooed and photographed {summer, obviously, is disappearing through the clouds}

Mondays now are long stretches of days; Tony has class in Boston after work. So its just me, Henry and Sophia from dawn until post-dusk, and well into storm-filled nights. Whereas weather is a very commonplace subject in New England, I will not discuss it - save the fact that we had a storm this Monday. With hail.

And without Tony.


The thunder was so loud and the lightening so sudden that my eyes filled with tears. I winced at the thunder and stared at Henry, who was staring back:

Okay, I thought. This is the make or break time. I can tremble and be scared (what I wanted to do) - or just totally ignore it and embrace it as a learnable/teachable moment. Henry was clearly looking for guidance. His eyes pleading "how do I respond to this (thunder/weather/noise/fear)?"

So being any good semi-lunatic mother, I reached outside, grabbed a handful of hail, put it on the tray of the high-chair, and let him play with it.

I documented it just to prove its brief existence:

{hail to the left of the squash}

I realized that I have to be careful of such moments - so my fears do not become their own.

And how to play with pieces of ice from the sky and hold it until it melts away like summer.