endings. beginnings. summer.

hot summer days. endings and beginnings.

This morning the house is open. the pets are eating breakfast. Kiddo is having some screen time, and I am easing into the day.  It's summer still, but there's a deepening of color outside that says, hurry. Enjoy it. It's fleeting.

It's a month until school starts. It's two weeks and two days until I turn 40. That sounds very old to me, because wasn't I just 27 or 33 or something? 

Summer feel over when August comes.  The stores are full of school supplies, the notices of tuition due and first-week plans start coming from school. Little League is already sending Fall Ball notices.

But it's a beginning time -- looking forward to a new school year. Celebrating the 10,000-some young people (and older people, like the 41-year-old gymnast and 55-year-old sailor) gathered in Rio de Janeiro to interact through competition, not combat.

Oh, that team of refugees. Oh, the teams from Vanuatu and Tuvalu, whose islands are shrinking year by year as the ice melts and the seas rise. Oh, all those joyful, determined faces. The brave acknowledgement of Brazil's history and of our common need for change. The Olympics choke me up every time. I'm deeply moved by the spectacle and the small moments. 

So here are the questions I'm living with this month: What is beginning? What is ending? How can I savor and stretch out these days of summer, while doing the work I need to do? How will I greet a new year of life and let go of being a young woman? 

What are your questions in this deep summertime? Or perhaps, this quiet, deep wintertime in your part of the world? How do we understand our journeys, and where are we on the path? At every moment, we are making that journey, in every decision -- we travel from the call, to the forest, to the crisis, to the resolution, and back to the village. Over and over again.

​What is ending? What is beginning?