August
afternoons at the beach dazzle my senses with their long shadows and
too bright light. I always find it impossible to leave. The richness
of light, the dense gold washing across my skin and glimmering over
the thunderous roll of waves, traps me in its clutches and whispers,
Stay - the cold days come too soon.
It has taken me the better part of my life to learn this: what is too
beautiful for words passes silently and it is only our special commitment
to awareness that marks its passing. This has not been a summer for
sitting on the porch late in to the night counting the stars and telling
our dreams. There have been too few dragonflies and fireflies and lazy
hammock afternoons. But there were lilacs in mad profusion. The night
air was drunk with the fragrance of honeysuckle. And rainbows –
was there ever such a year for rainbows?
On my way to work each morning I pass a pear tree. In some ways it is
my marker of how the summer has gone – some years it bears tiny
fruit or none at all. This year it is more fruit than leaves –
plump, weighty, juice-filled fruit dragging the branches down to the
road – an embarrassment of riches for its owners.
This is what I know about summer – it is always different, it
is always welcome, it always passes too soon. And, like love, reveling
in it is a gift we give ourselves.
The day had been horrid – cold, windy, dark and non-stop gusting
rain. Every little break in the rain gave me hope. I wanted to go to
the beach but there was no chance of that on a day such as this. And
then late afternoon brought that much-awaited glimmer of sunlight filtering
through the leaves of the trees and I rushed outside. Stand with your
back to the sun and there! It shimmers in to being arching across the
sky – God’s promise to Noah, Nature’s promise to us.
It will not rain forever. The sunlight coaxes radiant light from the
rain.
This is what I know about love - it is as much a gift to the giver as
it is to the recipient.
Love is quality of attention. It is what you find when you take time
to look. It is a mirror of our own hearts. It is a self-perpetuating
gift. When you look with love you see more evidence of its presence.
In many ways summer is like love – lush and lovely, always unpredictable
and rarely quite as perfect as our fantasies would have it be. But no
matter what the summer offers it is nothing but lovelier when we soften
our gaze and revel in the most humble of its offerings – the fragrance
of beach roses, the sway of Queen Anne’s Lace, the succulence
of a golden pear, the song of robins just before it rains.
Growing older has been good to me. When I was young everything seemed
so important. It had to be just right. It had to fit the carefully constructed
illusions that my fantasies and my insecurities had molded. After all,
what would people think? If I am grateful for anything the years have
taught me it is that people think whatever they want to - regardless
of what I do. So I might as well relax, appreciate, open my heart and
let the gifts flow.
I always thought that if someone loved me they would do these certain
things, say those secret words, make me feel so very special. And I
wasted a lot of time waiting for the magic to strike – the one
enchanted moment in which all the mysteries would be revealed. Now I
know — love is an inside job. Maybe we need all that proof because
we don’t know how to appreciate what we sense. Sometimes it is
only in giving up evidence of proof that we truly receive the beauties.
Today the sun drenches everything with a shuddering loveliness that
takes my breath. Someone has just mowed the lawn and that verdant cut-grass
fragrance mingles with the tingling sea air and the extravagant fragrance
of floribunda roses tumbling over the wooden fence. I close my eyes
and breath in remembering all the summer afternoons that seemed to last
forever and yet swept by too fast.
Let me never forget to breath deep on a day such as this. Let me never
be too busy to taste the honey-sweet juice of the pear or rush outside
to see the sunlight pluck iridescent shimmers from the lingering raindrops.
And more than that let me never fail to cherish the light in a dear
one’s eyes. Let me never turn from someone because they weren’t
the fantasy I’d made. Let me always stay awake and alive and open
– to beauty and to love.
