Endings and beginnings

Labor Day weekend:  A glorious three-day respite, and a line of demarcation.  We are on the edge of summer's end, getting a last weekend of wear out of our white skirts before packing them away.  Block parties and pool parties and festivity abound.  The Air Show is in town and people are flocking to the edge of the shoreway and the beaches and anywhere else they can turn their faces to the sky.  The weather has obliged with warmth and sun and humidity; its been more summerlike these past two days than it has been most of the summer.  I am trying to soak it all up before it ends.

But it is also just beginning-- this next season in our lives, the transition and newness and potential that is fall.  A new school year underway, with all the change and possibility in it yet to unfold.  I am trying to keep myself grounded in that this year-- the newness and potential-- and not write the script on this one, not yet, as tempting as it may be.  Here at the edge of my new year at work, I am seeing plenty of frustration ahead and it is hard, in the midst of all the intensity of beginning, to look at anything else.

There will be so much this year-- so much to work towards and so much yet unknown-- and as I say goodbye to summer I am going to greet the beginnings with happy anticipation.  As much as I can.

It's easier to do that with these two around.

This one started second grade on Tuesday.  SECOND GRADE!  Unbelievable.  He is off to a fine start, excited to go to school and be with friends again.  His teacher is organized and creative and seems to be a great fit.  Nat and Ivy have gotten a sneak peek into his classroom already thanks to taking in cupcakes for his birthday on Thursday.  A benefit of starting things a bit early this year.

A quiet family celebration for our seven year old on Thursday...  He's grown 3 and a half inches this year.

This girl is SO ready to start school herself.  She starts the slow St Paul's phase in this week and will be up to her full schedule by sometime next week...  She's been whiling away her lonely hours without her brother by taking trips to Wade Oval with daddy...

Corydon wasn't so sure she wanted to sit on an egg in the nest.

... and to the vacant houses across the street.  Fitting into the theme of endings, the two properties across from us, foreclosed and vacant for a good two years now, are about to be torn down.  After confirming this fact, and learning that the front doors are now unlocked, we've been shamelessly... salvaging for a week now. The homes are architectural treasures that have fallen to pieces, tragic and beautiful.  We are collecting pieces of them, so we can remember them always.  So far we have:  12 glass doorknobs, 6 divided-light windows, and amazing birds-eye maple picture frame, some ornate keyhole plates, a lot of flagstone, and a non-working piano.  It's been fun.  I'm going to miss "our" houses.  Though having woods across the street is going to be  lot better than having two disintegrating properties there.  As long as we can still park over there, that is.

A few highlights of this lovely weekend:

A trip to Whiskey Island on a cloudy, soft morning.  Social geese, crowds of people settling in for a day of recreating, driftwood and iron ore slag and a few peeks at the Air Show... 

Not one but two trips to the JCC pool -- our first and last times there this summer.  Our two little fish are going to miss their pool time...

Joining in on lemonade stand fun.  Our wonderful new neighbors set up the stand-- we stopped by for a drink and stayed for an hour, while Jack and Ivy enthusiastically helped to advertise, stir, and pour, and I got to chat with the stream of neighbors who came out to support the kids.  It's been a great weekend for loving where we live.

 And today-- a lovely Labor Day party with our Hiram crew.  We celebrated the end of summer and the beginning of dinner swap season at the Perry's new house, where our troupe of children ran and played and used leaves as swords.  They are shockingly big, our babies.  And surprisingly independent, entertaining each other with ease as the adults ate and talked.   They are the most gorgeous collection of creatures, and they all get along so well together, little matched sets of 7, 4, and 3 year olds breaking off to play together, or all 10 of them teaming up to play hide and seek, running and shrieking with their lovely limbs and hair and faces glowing in the sun.

We are so lucky.

Days like this-- I know I'm going to look back in twenty years and say, "Those were some GOOD times."
Golden.
The best.

The end of summer.   The end of an era, perhaps, as more and more of our friends move out to the suburbs and our babies grow up too fast.  The beginning of a year of busy days and early mornings and more than likely a lot of new grey hairs.

But surely, also, the beginning of so much more joy to come.