We wound down summer, if that’s even how to say it this particular year when the season felt more like a sloppy wet collision of days where everyone kept asking when will it actually BE summer, or quipping about the nuisance of so much rain.

A season usually reserved for deck sitting after grilling dinner, or for burning down the pile of wood and disparate broken things tucked over behind the garage, waiting to turn to ash. This year, we didn’t once light a match or watch smoke curl and twist to the tree branches overhead.

This week the kids started back at school and the sun showed up packed with so much sweltering heat, like a guest who arrives just as the party is ending and you’re tired to your bones, but still sits down on your couch and asks for a drink.

Four months ago, I did not know how to be alone. Thousands of miles apart from all of my people, I learned how to eat at a restaurant by myself, how to navigate unknown roads, how to walk trails with a bell jingling on your pack to ward off bears. How to be in a hotel room and simply exist without other bodies shuffling under blankets or gums flapping nonsense. 

I learned to lean into the quiet. And there I discovered I have worlds waiting in my own stillness, untapped. 

I flew home, buzzing, ready to begin.

But then, it was summer, however much of a summer it was, and there was no time. Just movement, a steady pushing forward from one week to the next, busyness and rain and my family passing by one another in and out of the house, a breathless mad dash, with dishes always left in the sink.

Last night, alone at a house at our camp, I tried to practice again, how to be still, how to feel my own heartbeat and lean into my quieter places.

Last night, I spent an hour figuring out how to login to this all but abandoned blog.

I responded to texts from my children, asking when I’ll be home, telling me to have sweet dreams.

I sat in front of a blank word document and thought of how everything feels changed, or in the process thereof. It’s hard to find stillness when the very stuff your made of feels as though it’s shifting. It’s hard to find eloquence in a mudslide.

Last night, I laid in bed and listened to the rain.

And this morning, came the words.