Quintessential Summer Moment

It is a cloudy sleepy Sunday morning. I woke with the thought that if I were vacationing in Maine, I might get up and go to town, buy a cup of coffee, some muffins and bring them back to eat outside. So I got up, drove into town and pretended I was on vacation.


Now I’m sitting on my front porch, lemon poppy seed muffin in hand, thinking about the elusive quality of summer and vacations.

It always seems the quintessential moments don’t happen until just before time is up. This week, autumn hangs in the air. It has been feeling imminent to me for weeks. The newly cool nights, the too early apples dropping to the ground with a thud, an idea looming in my head that September is not months away, but less than weeks.

Still. This past Friday night, the bon fire I’ve been dreaming about for years lit up the yard and my heart. The fire pit has lain in wait all that time, slowly filling with sticks from spring clean up. Now a circle of ash, a clean slate.

And this weekend the yard sale I’ve been thinking about for just about as long finally popped up in the driveway as if the seeds had just taken all those summers to sprout. This happens in the garden too. Mostly with newly distributed weeds, but sometimes from old seed packets thrown willy nilly to the wind with a wish.

Both are quintessentially summer. And as I write those words, rain drops start to fall in what I hope won’t mean a mad dash to get everything in the garage before a quintessential summer storm.

Still. This moment, even with the threat of rain, feels like summer in a way that is hard to to put into thoughts, harder still, words. It is a long ago feeling that lives in my marrow. No where to go. And despite mounting piles of dishes and laundry, to do lists that never end and dreams that need tending, there is nothing to do. The moment feels full just as it is. Riper than ripe. And yet not ready to pull from the vine.

My muffin too is dwindling and the closer it gets to crumbs, the more heightened my desire. I think of the Arthurian tale of a weaving that unravels even as it is woven, and wonder how my muffin might spontaneously regenerate, and my coffee become a bottomless cup. How life itself is always unraveling and reweaving itself at the same moment. There’s no use trying to catch the fast fraying edges. There is only the moment at hand. Its quintessential nature changing even as we note it.

I check the weather online, for an hour by hour accounting, the chance of precipitation in percentage. But when I look at the sky I know the truth. I feel it in my bones. For the moment at least, the yard sale is over.

Post Script. 10:42 am.
Since it looked like rain was going to foil the yard sale anyway, I cleaned out the garage and set it up for a Year Round Yard Sale. So now, throughout the remaining moments of summer, the imminent Autumn and into next summer it's a change of venue at the same address, Yard Sale in residence in the garage. And, I think ORBS are planning a visit today.