We are entering the heart of summer.
These are the days that I live for the weekend, when the children stay up late and we laugh a lot and jump off the boat into the ocean and curl up on the couch and watch Wimbledon until the middle of the day.
They are the days when we lie on grass and watch fireworks, gasping out loud at the finale, with one loud concussive boom after another and the night sky lit up with sparkling white, gold, blue and white.
They are the days of four cousins biking to the ice cream store alone and eating hamburgers on the back porch and swimming out to the line (as far as you can go) as the rain from Hurricane Arthur began to come down in earnest.
They are the days of beach towels and bathing suits strewn on the back porch to dry in the sun and bed-headed Grace and Whit wandering downstairs when they wake up and family tennis.
They are the days of the annual Fourth of July parade and the WW2 veterans making me cry and the marching bands moving me in some inexplicable, powerful way.
The thing is, I’m already starting to mourn this season as I live it. This is a familiar sensation for me, this nostalgia for something even while I am still very much in it, but rarely is it more keen than during the summer. Every year it’s earlier, the date when I can feel the whisper of fall underneath all the summer, and I cling desperately to these days. No matter how hard I try to be here now, though, no matter how much I hope that immersing myself in my life will make time slow down, the moments fall through my fingers like water even as I grasp.
It was hard to come home from the long weekend, honestly. I loved seeing my sister and her family and some old, dear friends. There was mess and chaos but there was also so much love, and so many memories. I was sad on Sunday night, preparing to re-enter regular life, and part of that sorrow was that a part of the year that I so dearly love was over. Another Fourth of July is gone, and I feel disoriented by how quickly this life is flying by. Two years ago I posted pictures from the annual parade and when I view them tears fill my eyes. Just as I said then: everything and nothing changes.
by Anthony Doerr has joined the very small pantheon of My Favorite Books of All Time. It is stunning, breathtaking, spectacular. Doerr’s lyrical, evocative, powerful writing reminds of my favorite fiction writer, Ondaatje. Read it. You won’t regret it.
. I described it on 
by Rainbow Rowell, which I’d heard such wonderful things about. I loved it as much as I hoped I would. I couldn’t put down the funny/sad story about belonging and connection and adolescence. I highly recommend!
