the dog days are (almost) over

 Joshua and I have always had a sort of an obsession with light. Natural, artificial, too much or too little, we are very conscious of the role light plays in our life. And since we've been together now for over ten years and we've watched the seasons fade into each other approximately forty-twoish times, you might think we would stop mentioning the changing light each year. But we never do. I can't think of a summer where I haven't said a dozen times that this is my absolute favorite time of day. This happens most frequently around 8pm on clear days in July, when we're passing by fields or even an empty overgrown lot that's lit up in the evening sun, and I am all, "look at those amber of waves of grain! I love it here in America!" because the light makes me feel this strange mix of childhood nostalgia and patriotism (other things that make me feel this way: dogs playing fetch in the backyard, every version of Don't Stop Believin' ever made, anything involving football).

Tonight Helo and I wandered through the neighborhood, well before 8pm, and the light had already settled into a just-before-sunset bronze. It's this time of day at this time of year that makes me run right home and tell Joshua that fall is right around the corner, I can SENSE IT! As can anyone else who calls planet earth their home, or owns a calendar, but it feels like a personal and bittersweet epiphany each and every year. 

Despite all that I love about summer; the evening light, the smell of sunscreen slicked into Matilda's curls, the way that it takes thirty seconds to throw her in a dress and sandals and run out the door, I'm practically clapping for every brittle and fallen leaf I see these days. A change will do you good, and all that. I'm not usually the one who takes Helo out in the evenings, and it felt serendipitous that I decided to spend this fading part of tonight outside. It's going to be scorching all week, but it's not really the heat that makes it summer for me. It's the light.

I could not love this adorably threatening sidewalk chalk barricade any more. I was a little worried that tiny children were going to jump out at me as I went ahead and strode into their sacred space, but I think they had been hauled off to homework and bedtimes so....Do Not Pas this Lin, summer! We are moving on to crisper and brisker things.