While the arrival of pumpkin spice on local menus precociously suggests summer’s end, the autumn equinox is still over a month away.  Still, the New Hampshire days grow appreciably shorter, the UNH outdoor pool sends warnings of early closure, and back-to-school anxieties bubble up in my dreams—even as my third fall of retirement signals that care’s end.  I reckon a lifetime of worrying about returning to school—kindergarten, six years of elementary, three of middle, three more of high school, four years of college, eight years of graduate school, and eleven years of tenure-track professing, followed by twenty-five more of just-barely-hanging-on adjunct teaching impose patterns two years of retirement cannot erase.  Two nights ago I was dreaming/worrying about being back in my lovely Centre College office, explaining to the husband who would be the reason I left that perfect-for-me job that I was concerned about copying my new semester’s syllabi (8-courses-per-year load back then), and woke at 3.40 am in an absolute panic about giving up the nearly impossible-to-get rare tenured associate professor of humanities position I left a quarter century ago.  It took quite while to re-situate myself in the present, despite all those troubled waters calmed long ago.

As the summer season winds down, I’m alternately chastising myself for not getting more projects accomplished and making fitful progress on sorting-and-discarding (What to do with old VHS tapes??  How to manage the saudade—that perfect Portuguese word meaning profound longing for what can never be had again—conjured by handling my late husband’s “course packs,” those pre-internet packets of photocopied course materials, along with the handwritten notes and diagrams of flight patterns he made while studying for the instrument rating of which he was so proud.  Tucked into one of his pilot’s manuals I found a child’s primer, When I Grow Up, folded to “I want to be a PILOT when I grow up,” with the admonition that pilots need good teeth.  And the course pack for the 1982 Humanities 610 course, “New England Culture in Changing Times,” comprises material that would be far beyond most of the undergrads I last taught in 2020.  Ay, me.

Meanwhile, I hear the charger’s fan cooling the large lithium battery that will power my new electric lawn mower—once I overcome my fear of it blowing up and/or electrocuting me.  We do adapt to changing times, right?  Evolve or else.  At least I need no longer fret over congestion at the xerox machine as I queue to copy syllabi and silently rehearse my opening lectures.

And it has been a fine summer of new and returning pleasures.  That swell and meaningful trip to visit family in Wisconsin.  Discovering the GBH studio in the Boston Public Library with its cool Newsfeed Café and intrepid Boston Public Radio hosts, Jim Braude and Margery Eagan broadcasting about our end times.

The return of peach season at Union Lake Peach Orchard in Barrington.

Leisurely meals out with a friend along the Portsmouth waterfront, and an afternoon stroll through Prescott Park.

The Portsmouth waterfront and park in full bloom . . .

Bringing a lawn chair to Sullivan Square, Berwick, and enjoying the rainstorm that cooled that very hot day, prelude to the performance of my talented aerialist neighbor Anne, in the excellent company of her mom Beth and son Leo.

A first-time-ever swim in the bracingly cold and surprisingly rejuvenating waters of New Castle Common Cove with friend Jennifer, as the local volleyball teams gathered to play on the beach in their fluorescent shirts, composing a novel Bruegel scene.

Enjoying sunset from my deck while anticipating the Southern Delta Aquariids meteor shower.

More delights to come:  three dinner parties in four days—possible again since the worst of COVID seems past.  I’ll try my hand at Chinese ink painting next week, and enjoy the silent running of my new lawn mower:  with headlights!  For now, I’m groovin’ with comedian Tom Papa, whose book title exhorts:  You’re Doing Great! . . . and other reasons to stay alive.  The macrocosm’s a mess, political divide and social media run amuck.  Democracy threatened. Liz Cheney out of office for speaking truth. Human endeavor all vanity.

Yet much of the time, it’s really pretty funny. Carpe diem.