Equinox

Summer is over. The days of more light than darkness are once again in the past. Every year I feel like summer might never end, and every year the equinox approaches, one day at a time, and then - as they say - all of a sudden. Our baby chestnut tree in the front yard has already dropped half its leaves.

 My summer was very busy. Aside from Sunday sermons and few letters, I hardly wrote anything new. Many thousands of people came sailing. It's hard to believe, but the logbook attests to the truth, not just with details of wind speed and weather and sea state, but numbers of passengers, souls on board. The old schooner was ninety-nine years old this year. For a wooden boat, that seems like something of a miracle, but it's probably not. There's something in the long winters of rest and restoration that help us keep her alive. Maybe it's just a Maine thing to see it that way. Some summer people have already started hauling their boats and packing up for more clement weather somewhere else. Our first nor’easter is threatening to arrive in this weekend.

I already know that I will look back on this summer with both sadness and joy, lamenting that I did not capture more moments in words. But the days were so long, and I was often too tired at the end of the days, when I had the time to reflect and remember.

There was the non-stop drive from Maine to Annapolis on the hottest day of the year. The smoke from the Canadian forest fires cloaked the Hudson River and the far end of the George Washington Bridge in the apocalyptic cloud that burned our eyes even with the windows closed. My wife's father, Jack, my father-in-law and Papa to my boys, and former navy captain had been departing into dementia for years. We were going down for his birthday, planning to take our time, until we got the call when we were already rolling. "Hurry if you can. He's dying now." That's how it works, day by day, then all of a sudden.

 It was 95 degrees at midnight in Annapolis. The air conditioner in Jack's room had failed, but the nursing staff had a fan blowing in cooler air from the hallway. A picture of our boys was by his nightstand and his Navy retirement letter was framed on the wall. He lay unconscious, breathing hard, when I watched my wife hug her dad and kiss him goodbye for the last time.

Before leaving Maine, at the last minute, I had tossed my prayerbook into my backpack. We had beautiful words to pray last rites with him. "Into your hands, O merciful Savior, we commend your servant, Jack...."

 Jack died on his birthday. It was so sad. And so perfect. And we were there.

 And three weeks later, back in Maine, my oldest son, an about-to-be-dad, called me at midnight to ask me to pray. My daughter-in-law's labor had been long and painful. His normally strong voice revealed a twinge of fear, and how much he hated watching his wife suffer (for the best event that was about to happen in their lives.) I remembered decades ago when he came into the world, I worried the same way. So I got out of bed and came downstairs and prayed. I was still on my knees when my son called me with the good news that my grandson was born. There is no combination of words good enough to describe some moments. So perhaps It's ok I hardly wrote this summer. And as I gaze out the window at the slow, later-coming dawn of this first day of fall, I feel my cup of gratitude running over.