summertime at 40
On my commute I pass by the DCR pool in North Cambridge, a lovely free community pool of off Rindge Ave. Lovely for a brief, fleeting moment of the year, that is—because in Massachusetts they open the outdoor pools in mid-June and close them again at the end of August. And to me, this summer, that time went by impossibly fast.
Of course, when I stop to think about it I did a lot of different things this summer. And Lijah is much more mature now than he was back when he first decided the coming of warm weather was no reason not to wear fleece pants every day (in many ways; he's still rocking the pants). But even as I intellectually appreciate the passage of time as marked in those ways, this summer felt like just a blink.
Maybe it's because we hardly went to the pond at all. It was hardly hot, and the boys were always playing with friends so and resistant to going anywhere. I don't think we swam more than three or four times. Or it could be the terrible state of the garden—I've been mentally hurrying along to next year since mid-July. Or maybe it's just that I'm old now. Against 40 years, two and a half months isn't much. Oh well, that just means that winter will fly by too, and before I know it I'll be planting again. I'm sure the six-year-olds enjoyed the heck out of that pool; as for me I'll be thinking about seeds for next year.