Summer's end...again

It's looming. I have a pit in my stomach and I don't want to talk about it. Even good students dread the start of school and I was never an exception...up through graduate school. My kids are the same and I love them for it--we wallow together at the end of every August. Chip sympathizes but without true appreciation and respect for the dread. The beginning of the calendar year is September no matter what the Romans have led us to believe. A week ago, I still had the fantasy going that autumn and school and early sunsets were a long way off. I feel so sad for all the little children this week.



A trip to Two Harbors, MN on the northshore of Lake Superior with girlfriends. Such a fun time and although there were fall- like temperatures up there and a few red leaves on the ground already, it was still summer. What a difference a week makes.





Agates are the biggest treasure to be found on the northshore of Lake Superior and my friends and I were obsessed in our search for them. Milky and translucent, jammed layers of creams and reds--symbolic stone testaments of long-standing friendship. Eons of laughs, history, private joys and sorrows, marriages, deaths, children, illness compressed into a tight wad of unbreakable matter.





All the stones I found are in my garage now. Today I brought them out to show a friend and let them pass through my fingers over and over....pretending I'm on the beach again and it's summer and I'm younger and my kids are younger and life is moving at a snail's pace.

Nothing funny about school starting. It's even hard to blog. Just want to curl up and be in a funk.