The End of a Season

I read a poem every morning, thanks to The Writers Almanac sponsored by American Public Media. Today it was Robert Frost and it caught the mood of what I wanted to write about in this post.

Reluctance

by Robert Frost

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question 'Whither?'

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,

And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

"Reluctance" by Robert Frost, from A Boy's Will and North of Boston. © Penguin, 2001. Reprinted with permission. (buy now) 

September. The sad music of the nighttime crickets brings back years of memories of lying in my childhood bed the night before the start of a new school year. I felt so sad about the end of summer in those days. I thought of summer as a time when I didn't have to worry about homework and could play with friends any day of the week. It wasn't that I disliked school so much, but that last night before the new school year began I imagined I would feel homesick that next day, that I would miss my mom and swimming and playing "My Side of the Mountain" in the woods. This is a feeling that is ingrained in me. Every September I am haunted by a back-to-school anxiety and "reluctance" even during those few years of my life when the crickets heralded no change to my routine.

So why does the end of summer make me feel so blue? Might it be the loss of long and lazy summer days? That is NOT it. The pace of my summer day is closer to that of a labor camp than that of a day at the beach. Hours spent pulling at the billions of stinkin' weeds which threaten to strangle all living creatures on my property, or dragging two miles of hose around the yard with arms connected to a recently mutilated torso, are enough for me to long for snow-bound, winter days trapped in my office.

Is it the loss of having my darling children near me all day long? Those sweet little voices chiming pleasantly throughout the house atop of summer breezes floating through the window screens? I don't think so. Take for example the greetings I am likely to receive after the daily trip to the grocery store that is required when my voracious offspring are in residence. "Mommy! You forgot to buy that critically important, incredibly exotic, habanero, tequila spiked, roasted chipolte hot sauce I need. I've asked you to buy that five times already!" Or, "Don't tell me you forgot to go that store that is about 20 miles out of your way to buy that bottle of probiotic organisms that costs about $90.00 but that is absolutely critical to maintaining the natural balance of my intestinal microflora?"  No, I don't think it is the cheerful family banter that I miss so much.

Perhaps it is the shared pastimes of summer that I miss. Such as when my darlings "share" with me their gigantic towers of laundry that they have been saving up until they have worn their last pair of 13-year old underwear twice. Probably not. I feel like passing out when I see their sheets. My daughter's look like several people were slaughtered with a dull knife in her bed. And my son's look (and smell) like they had been used to clean out the chicken coop.

Could it be the colorful clutter that charmingly adorns their bedrooms and that makes me shudder with repulsion every time I accidentally allow my eyes to shift in their direction when I walk by? Not likely. It took me weeks to remove from their rooms the empty seltzer cans, dirty coffee mugs, shreds of tampon and razor packaging, crumpled sheets of notes on topics like "Dance and Society: 1960 - present" (Jesus, what are we paying for!?) or "World Politics" (huh?), and most horrifying of all, a large, albeit unopened, box of condoms.

So I am reminded of another "poem" of sorts - one perhaps that my daughter might have "danced" to last semester....

One less bell to answer
One less egg to fry
One less man to pick up after
I should be happy
But all I do is cry...
Songwriters: Hal David;Burt Bacharach