This & That and the end of a hot August

August 19, 2010 By Kelle

I am a Michigan girl at heart. I like a good crisp autumn where the bleachers at a football game are filled with mittens cradling steamy styrofoam cups. I like raking heaps of crunchy leaves–Maple and Oak and Aspen–that once were green, then golden, then brown. I like picking out the biggest hot sugared donut behind the counter at the cider mill and shamelessly telling the donut-getter, “No, not that one…that one.”

And while I used to spend this time of year rifling through catalogues, dreaming of the perfect camel-colored pea coat for fall, I instead wipe the sweat off my brow, brace myself for a hot September and accept that Bismarck and Pygmy Date Palms might not lose their leaves, but they shade the Florida autumn sun just right.

Seasons change differently for some…in their own way, in their own place. And we bloom where we are planted. We are planted in the deep south of Florida where the late August sun is sometimes hot and unforgiving but still casts deep shadows over little bodies on walks to the lake.

And though we run barefoot in November and dance along shore with the tide in December, we still sip apple cider and hang cinnamon brooms from our pantry doors once the season has officially changed (okay, and sometimes before). This last weekend, as I watched Brett sink into a comfortable recline on the couch and heard the sounds of pre-season football, I smiled knowing it’s coming…that season shift. And as I contemplate just what ridiculously cute costumes in which my girls will parade our neighborhood streets this October and just how many pies I will attempt to make in the coming months, I am noticing that my thirties and all the beautiful surprises they have brought with them are shaping me more…to be content. And to bloom where I am planted.

It’s hot. And while the rest of the country prepares for all the things I love in the coming months…so will I. Because I will make it what I want it to be. Our sun may be hotter…but it’s still the same sun that hangs above every blessed creature in this great big world.

And today, it’s heat still whispers summer. The last of it. The long and languid bridge to September. To football and orchards and parent teacher conferences. To huddling hot chocolate in styrofoam cups in some parts of the world and running barefoot on shell paths through foamy ocean waves in others.

Behold…the beauty of August.

Where just my big girl and I enjoyed an evening at the lake. Where she held my hand and skipped on the way there and unleashed her curiosity and wonder of the world once she arrived.

She asked to wear my necklace tonight. And who am I to say no?

And sometimes when I am watching her–all three ripe years of her–I squint my eyes and imagine looking at her years ago…before I was a mama…and I wonder just how astounded I would have been if you told me she was gonna be mine someday. If I could have quite possible believed that I would be so lucky. Or that I would have understood the magnitude of love and happiness and soul-stretching that would occur from a blond little sprite with mossy eyes and marshmallow hair and a willowy frame that curls into my arms just so.