Friday, August 24, 2012

cusp

There's a moment every year--a clear, crystalline moment--when you are reminded that summer will not linger forever, that fall is on its way.

Sometimes it hits you over the head, comes storming in (or at least threatening to storm in) like God's own thunder, and sends an entire city into lockdown.

Sometimes it is meditative, or vegetative, or sad.

This year it was more subtle than that. After a seemingly endless string of broiling hot city summer days, we forgot to turn on the bedroom fan one night earlier this week before going to bed. I woke up hours later, 2am and filled with strange dreams, drenched in sweat. I got up and turned on the fan, drank a glass of cold water, returned to bed and eventually to sleep.

Just as it began to grow light, in those moments before true dawn, I woke up cold, and I pulled the sheet up tight around myself and curled towards Evan, whose broad back and tangled hair felt comfortably, wonderfully warm.

I am leaving town this year for Labor Day Weekend, for the first time in ages and ages, and last night got it into my head to settle on a knitting project for the trip.  Apparently I am done with my summer silks and pale, bridal colors.  I pulled out from deep in my closet a gorgeous over-sized hank of merino wool in rich dark burgundies, jewel reds, almost browns: the perfect transition piece into the coming autumn.

That moment, that cusp, came early this year and even if it gets up to a hundred degrees next week there isn't really any going back.


1 comment:

0rangey said...

I'm finally catching up--when summer came and blogger changed templates and I got reluctant to face myself again I stopped reading and writing (as you may have noticed)--and now you're making me want to learn to knit and crochet. Again. (Want again, that is, not knit and crochet again.) It is my sincere hope that one of these days I will actually sit down and learn, and practice until I really get it.