I have spent a long time in places where late summer is the worst time of year. Houston in September, and even October, was routinely 100 degrees. My friends in other places, with their “sweater weather” and apples and pumpkins and leaves made it, somehow, feel worse than August. We had already been so hot since May.
This year in New England, a place where summer can be surprisingly hard for me to gauge, we were determined to “seize the moment.” We have been to every regional Sheep and Wool Show (and New England is great at Sheep and Wool Shows). We have camped four weekends, maybe six, and on the other weekends we are at the farmer’s market early, racing to buy both local tomatoes and the best soft cheese before one or the other sells out. Tomato season is short here.
My chores are mostly undone. I do laundry what feels like every weekday to catch up. Half of the time on Thursday I spend all of my work breaks packing, as fast as I can, from a list that lives perpetually in my to-dos. It has been fun, but also exhausting. Late July’s camping trip was rough and for a while I wasn’t sure I was ever going to recover.
I am tired.
The point of this is that we believe we can live like this all the time, at this kind of maximum intensity. We cannot. I am not glad that winter is arriving soon in the same way I was glad in a different climate. But I am still glad to see summer go.
Jessica Thinks 