It’s happening. That summer ending thing. That school starting thing. Those new beginnings.
Time presses on and I stumble to catch up. Every season.
I’m looking through pictures of my boys. Of summer. I’m nostalgic before a season has even completely passed. How can this be?
The pictures arm me with goodness and light. They shower me with feelings of happiness and erase that sinking feeling of guilt that I am failing them, that I don’t enjoy them enough, that I’m not appreciating how quickly it all passes.
I’m stuck in between the seasons. The sun still beating down and warming me up, readying myself for the chill of fall.
I like change. I welcome it. But I seem to be caught, like the seasons, trying to figure out which way to go. Do you ever feel caught? Stuck? Unsure of your position in the universe that is your small life?
I’m looking for my compass. It’s been lost for some time now. Do you think I can borrow yours to find my own?
I thought I always knew which way pointed North but now I’m not so sure. My life is like playing pin the tail on the moment and I’m usually just left spinning.
Read More in Sarah Writes
Add a Comment
so eloquent. my compass is very often spinning it’s little arrow this way and that and once in a while, usually when I’m actually quiet (which is pretty rare) it will still. Our lives are so small in the big scheme, but it’s what we have and we are all connected whether we realize it or not. We matter. So thankful for your sharing of your life.
I feel like I do a lot of going through the motions every day. Some days I feel strong, happy, complete and others I feel inadequate, small and futile. I guess it’s all about finding balance and not holding ourselves to an unrealistic expectation of what life “should” be. It’s what we make of it that counts.
“pin the tail on the moment” made me smile.
You probably don’t want to borrow my compass, because I have a horrible sense of direction, but if you need anything else from me, feel free to ask.
I often feel stuck. Usually a return to a book of poems or a novel by a writer I deeply love/admire helps me get out of the hole a little. Sorry things seem so muddled right now, sweet girl.
Of course you know I’m nodding. In understanding and support.
Pin the tail on the moment – love it. I can see us, all blind folded, holding the tails (watch out, they’re sharp!) being spun around.
Yes. If only my compass weren’t lost, I would happily share.
I bet it happens to the best of us.
And maybe we should lose our compass more. Who knows what we’ll discover?
I can’t lend you my compass, cause it’s busted, too.
I am mourning the loss of summer and the time and freedom with my boys (including the Hubs) so much, that I find myself not wanting to post b/c the only thing on my mind is the loss of summer, and who wants to read more about that?
I’m stumbling to catch up too. (Which is why I’m reading blogs instead of doing what I need to do to catch up. :)
The F word. Failure. Why are mothers so quick to brand their own feelings or behaviors failure? Why not human?
As for catch up – I’ve decided it’s “just life.” I do what I can, with what I have, and focus on the priorities. There will always be a trail of tasks never finished. Isn’t that part of the parenting job description – for most of us?
Funny, I was just mourning summer, as the cool winds blow through the cloud-filled sky. And trying to figure out what the rest of the year has in store for me.
I completely understand. I have not yet found my bearings as the school year is now in it’s third week…I find myself longing for long, lazy days filled with adventures, or not. But decidedly more relaxing than where I am right now…
I need to borrow a compass for the moment to moments, let alone season to season…
Lovely words.
Lovely post. I need that compass too because there have been moments in these last few weeks that I am desperate for some direction.
Isn’t that such a big part of what blogging is? Borrowing each other’s compasses for a moment here and there? Reading words that spark thoughts and memories and yearnings and saying, that’s right, that’s what I want my North to be!
Or, at the very least, having others to be lost with, and not feeling so alone during the crazy, scary process of being found.
I regularly think I’ve lost my way. New seasons especially will do that to me… I don’t think there’s any way to make sire we’re always headed North, always appreciating and present enough, always *being* enough… maybe the trick is not to grade our own past performance, but to make a plan for what we want tomorrow to look like. Maybe.
I seem to find that Fall brings about a sense of quiet nostaglia. Soon the holidays will be approaching. I am looking at my life as one more year passed, and it’s not that I’m sad to be getting older, just that life keeps ticking along.
I find fall brings me feeling like I need to play catch up with everything else. Only I also have one still at home that needs my attention. So I get the spinning sensation too, that I don’t know what direction I should be heading.
I want to spend time with my one at home and yet there are things that need to be taken care of. It is a constant feeling of being pulled two ways. Do we ever know which direction is right?
“I’m nostalgic before a season has even completely passed.” Oh, I’m this way too. I wish I wasn’t! Like how I mourn the end of a vacation when it’s only halfway done. So silly.
Somehow, it’s the chill of fall that always rights me, as though I’ve made it through another year of those “lesser” seasons and am temporally back where I belong. Summer is the season when my internal compass goes haywire, when I feel like I’ve spun every wheel and still can’t extricate myself from the mud. Here’s to hoping your wheels unstick themselves soon!
I think of the Bertolucci film of Paul Bowles’ “The Sheltering Sky,” where the heroine has been through hell and back and wanders into a cafe, out of the desert, out of captivity, out of loss and torment, back in civilization inexorably changed. A man with piercing blue eyes, played in the film by Bowles himself, looks into her haunted eyes and asks her, “Are you lost?” She takes in the question, mute… and the film ends.
I’m a big believer in lostness, in the essential importance of being lost before we can possibly be found, even by our Selves.
I recommend this book, and/or film… and also Chet Baker’s haunting album, “Let’s Get Lost.” Jettison the compass of any but your true heart, and look to the sun, the birds and the trees for guidance.
“I’m nostalgic before a season has even completely passed. How can this be?”
Oh, how I am nodding along with that statement. Yes. It is so hard to really understand that THIS IS LIFE I AM LIVING IT NOW, especially when I still have those lingering feelings of DID I DO ENOUGH? DID I DO IT RIGHT? DID I MAKE THIS SUMMER AS GREAT AS IT COULD HAVE BEEN?
Of course, the answer is always “no”. NOthing is ever really as great as it could have been. I guess that’s life, right? But it was still pretty great, in its own, understated, messed-up way.