Beauty (or, on the edge)

 It's September 16th but you wouldn't know it in Cleveland.  82 degrees of sunshine bliss this evening, so we went to the lake.

The off-season beach was perfect.  The water was warm.   Calm, happy Clevelanders swimming and barbecuing all over the place like its still summertime around here.

Might as well be. We're still dressing in tank tops and sandals, after all...

 One gorgeous view just wasn't enough for us, so we took in sunset at North Coast Harbor, where the marina and patio restaurants and volleyball courts were a picture of summery fun.

One big, endless summer-- and and I am holding on to all the beauty of it, as hard as I can.

 Here on the edge of autumn, my feet are firmly stuck in summertime.

I've been reading a bit of Brene Brown's work Courage and she talks of a concept called Foreboding Joy.  Its not really a positive thing (as would make sense, what with the foreboding)... its the idea that we tend, in moments of happiness, to focus on the idea that it all could end, catastrophically, at any moment.  The idea that it will end, and indeed we deserve it to end, because so much joy just can't be possible, can't last.

I am finding myself foreboding joy tonight.

Floating in this transitional season, this fall-not-fall, barefoot in the sand after full week of work... I feel like I am in a liminal moment in my life as a whole.  On the edge of change but not there yet.

And standing here in the sand and the waves and the endless summer-- there is so much beauty in my life right now that I feel it can't last.

The season will turn and time will pass and the children will grow and I will continue inexorably on this path of getting older and the thing is-- when everything is so good right now... I'd just rather not change it.

Here I am, staring down the nose of 40.  I'm not that concerned with turning 40.  Except that really I am.  I am not loving the various twinges of aging I've started to feel.  I've a tendency towards vanity and it turns out that wrinkles and general sagginess aren't really helping things out for me.  I know that there is supposed to be some mythical attainment of wisdom and contentment out there for me in the next decade of my life, and so that's something to look forward to.  I'd just rather not attain all those good things while simultaneously getting older, you know?

And in the meantime my dog is getting old, too.  It hurts my heart to see her in pain from arthritis and full of anxiety and confusion. My puppy, light of my life.  Time goes too fast for dogs.  I'd like to stop time right now for my Cory girl...

And in the meantime my sweet babies have become for-real kids, lanky and long and full of attitude and emotions and independent desires.  And I am missing their littleness painfully even as I love their newfound independence.  And I am fully in love with who they are now even as I worry about who they will become.  Big kids, big worries. Are we doing this right?  I mean, they will REMEMBER things now.  These are prime years for emotional scarring!  And what will I DO with them when they are (even more) angsty teenagers?  And HOW will we get them to eat and not fight.  And I want to be fully present for era of their lives even as I want to stop time, maybe even rewind a bit, to a less complicated moment in parenting...

And in the meantime life keeps getting more expensive and more frantic and more full and our resources of time and money don't seen to grow at the same rate.  And I worry about how we'll keep up financially and how we'll save for retirement and good god what about college for our not-so-little ones?  How exorbitant will tuition be in ten years and what in the world will we do to make sure their lives continue to unfold to the fullest?  Right now, in this moment, on the edge of summer with our still-kind-of-little ones, we are doing alright.  We are doing all the things and making a few ends meet.  We just need a holding pattern for a while to keep it that way...

Here on the edge of change-- the change of futures yet to come-- my foreboding joy is manifesting as wild dreams of moving off the grid, starting a hobby goat farm, radical downsizing, rehabbing foreclosed homes... and by fits of temper about cracked plaster and dirty floors and the overwhelming mundanity of daily life.  "Anywhere but here" fantasies to transport me away from worries over the future.

I mean, if I choose the change, then I am in control, right? Instead of waiting with bated breath to see what changes the world will throw at me, I could just change everything on my own.

There is a lot that is appealing about that idea.

Especially that idea about the goat farm, because I really love goats.

But on nights like tonight-- I wouldn't change a thing. 

How could I?    Instead, I will honor my fears and then put them aside.  I will refuse to forbode joy.  I will face the future with courage and trust it to unfold before me graciously.  I will trust myself to grow and change along with it.

And-- I will also keep holding on to summertime, for as long as I can.