September Blog Chain–Seasons

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This month’s AW Blog Chain subject is “Seasons” and the guidelines were thus:

You can take this from any angle: a story/poem about your favorite season, a description of the change of seasons, an explanation why a season inspires you more than another, etc. Just have fun with it!

I am bookended by a gulp-worthy pair–was preceded in this month’s chain by Hillaryjacques and will be followed by Laffarsmith. The entire list of participants is at the end of this post.

Summer

I look at my children, in the late Spring of their young lives while my mirror tells me I am in the Fall of mine. We meet in the middle in Summer.

In that season, I watch them make memories on lazy days when nights are long and mornings are languished away in crisp cotton sheets that smell of musty heads and dirty feet.

Do they know that I have my own such memories?

Have I told them of the times I jumped on trampolines, or stole pecans from backyards, or snuck into underground parking lots to skate on the smoothest concrete in town? Like me, will they ride an old rope swing, suspended nearly one hundred feet from the limb of a tree, and experience its tummy tingling floaty flight? What about breaking the glass-like surface of a swimming pool after a warm summer’s rain has made it so soft it scarcely feels like water?

I watch them picking the blackberries that grow amongst the brambles, sun-warmed sweetness whose only prep is a minor amount of dusting. These are the summer fruits of the Pacific Northwest, so very different from my childhood in the South where peaches reigned supreme. Also missing are roller skates; the Ripstick or Razor scooter are the rides of choice now. A bicycle will do in a pinch, but there are no cards in the spokes or banana seats, heaven forbid.

I watch the leaves begin to fall in my backyard and know that the green will soon yield entirely to brown. And as I waken my children for the first day of school, their young heads still shaking off slumber’s grip, we both feel the pang of a Summer that ended far too soon.

16 thoughts on “September Blog Chain–Seasons”

Ah…nostalgia…thank you…and nicely done!

Is life all that we know? Children teach us that life is so much more than that.

Great stuff.

I had a banana seat bike!! My kids probably wouldn’t touch one! It’s Razor scooters here too. But I did get them on a tire swing from a big oak about 1.5 years ago and they STILL talk about it. 🙂 Gotta love ‘the old way’. 🙂

Great post!

My little one is about to turn 3, but I wouldn’t say I’m in the fall just yet.

Beautifully nostalgic, and the growing up so fast/you’re a “mom”; you were never a child gets me right where my heart is supposed to be.

This is my favorite, for the contrast and the right-on description that should be kind of disgusting, but instead is soothingly sweet: “mornings are languished away in crisp cotton sheets that smell of musty heads and dirty feet.”

Okay, now I know what I’m going to write for this chain. You’ve inspired me. I love this. Thanks.

I like that you’re using the seasons as a metaphor. They get tossed around like that so much in literature, yet until now I haven’t seen it much in this month’s chain.

I think this is a beautifully written piece of nostalgia. You needn’t worry about the bookends (*gulp*). The line that made me smile and wish that I could waltz my way back to my childhood…… “I watch them make memories on lazy days when nights are long and mornings are languished away in crisp cotton sheets that smell of musty heads and dirty feet.”… ;o)

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Lovely piece. Thanks for sharing.

Very evocative of the summer. Nicely done.

“Nostalgia” is definitely the right word. This is beautiful!

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I love your opening paragraph, “I look at my children, in the late Spring of their young lives while my mirror tells me I am in the Fall of mine. We meet in the middle in Summer.” I’d never thought of our lifetime with the same seasonal turn as each year. When I think about it, my own children are clearly early spring but I think, I hope, my 28 years could pass for very late spring or early summer.

18 years ago I was my daughter’s age (10). I remember being ten and living very differently then she does now. When I was ten there was freedom to roam the neighborhood. We spent more time outside than in. We walked everywhere and played with anyone who had a friendly smile. Summer was about water parks and six weeks of being completely carefree. Our children appear to lead very different lives. I wonder what they’ll remember fondly when they reminisce in the summer’s of our grandchildren.

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