“With all due respect” usually implies there is more respect than is deserved, and often comes at the start of something that shouldn’t get any respect at all.

Just tell it like it is. We all know the truth.

#TinyThreads

Apologies for using the ‘F’ word this early, but when Halloween has taken over the stores, part of me has already given up the glorious ghost that is summer, letting the gardens turn to dried hay and refocusing on what’s inside the house and going to see us through the fall and winter. In that spirit of preparation, this picture of Snoopy may be my inspiration piece for the season to come.

Happy Friday, everybody. Take it easy in these final weekends of summer… and a reminder that next weekend is my 50th birthday. If you need to drop any gifts off to Andy to make sure he brings them to Boston with us, please contact him directly. Blessings.

Queen Ann’s lace is practically a weed in these parts, and for many years I decried and condemned it as such. (As is so often the case, I was the cause of my own trauma, having plucked a plant from the roadside and bringing it back to my childhood home, where it soon filled the entire garden with volunteers quickly putting those stalwart taproots down like little carrots, and giving me ample weeding opportunities.) As much as I’ve come to appreciate the plant and its delicate lace-like flowers, it has no place in the cultivated garden.

Its use as a cut flower is also iffy in my experience. Sometimes it’s grand, and sometimes the flowers wilt no matter what kind of magic one employs. While I can relate to and respect that sort of temperamental moodiness, I’m approaching the age where I just don’t have the energy for such games. Best to admire this beauty from afar, along the edges of things, where roads and meadows mingle, and the sun illuminates the creamy dreaminess of the blooms.

There comes a point in every summer where I tend to feel a little anxious for fall. I mean that in all the varying meanings of the word – the excitement of looking forward to it, the anxiety of what might be to come, the mixed emotions of rushing to the end of a favored season. Maybe that explains my feeling on the verge of tears and wanting to throw up lately – perhaps it’s not just the turn of 50 around the corner, but just the usual machinations of a season in flux.

It’s puzzling to me, as the weather has been ideally summer-like of late, and after a slow start and agonizingly-paced build-up to the sun and heat, I should probably simply enjoy it, but my mind has rarely done what it’s supposed to do. To combat such foolishness, I will re-focus my energy on enjoying the moment at hand, on my daily meditation, on the idea of being mindful and aware of every sensation before summer slips by.

Summer – always some towering, insurmountable idea, always some indefinable force, always shining when you least expect it, and always waiting for you to indulge just as she’s about to leave.

Visiting Dad on the anniversary of his death didn’t bother me when it happened, but it was one of those haunting things that creeps back little by little until you find yourself crying in the pool, salty tears dripping into a chlorinated sea, while a restless wind was willed into some message of my father saying hello.

On the actual anniversary date, I drove to Amsterdam first thing in the morning, and paused at the bottom of the cemetery hill, where a stand of wild roses had gone to hips, and the Queen Ann’s lace was already nodding droopy heads beneath the hot sun. At his site, I said a quick hello and ran my fingers over the etched name – our name – in the stone. I didn’t stay long, as I could sense he wasn’t there – not in the hot sun, not in the exposed space… but nearby a row of evergreens afforded some shade, and instead of getting back in the car, I walked over to the shady section.

Here, where lichens and moss grew, and relief from sun and heat was found, is where I felt my father, as it’s where he would have been on such a day. How strange and ultimately fitting that the man from the Philippines, who had grown up in sun stronger and more relentless than anything I could know in upstate New York, would so shun the heat of a summer day. He taught me that without ever bringing me back home with him.

There was some comfort in the shade, and consolation in the idea that this is where Dad might have drifted had he actually been there with me. I think that’s one of the things that I miss most about him. He would always end up quietly on the periphery, or secluded in some room with a television, or in the shade of an awning when everyone else battled the sun on the lawn or in the pool. When crowds swelled and kids got loud, I could seek him out and find him in some peaceful respite. Sometimes it was as simple as seeing him sitting at a table at some wedding dinner or social event, and I’d sit down beside him, just as uncomfortable and wishing to be somewhere else as he was. We didn’t need to talk or lament anything out loud – it was enough just being there with him.

It’s strange to admit this, but I don’t always feel included by family and friends, and when my Dad was alive I always had a space next to him, a place where I felt wanted and valued and loved, a place where he put me because he was proud of me.

I don’t know where that place is anymore.

Lately I’ve fallen out of the summer island groove, but with Mercury finally out of retrograde motion, the full moon finishing up, and Mars leaving Virgo, perhaps some relief is in store, and the rest of the summer can return to relaxation and rejuvenation. My hopes and expectations have been tempered of late, so I’ll be grateful for whatever summer deigns to give us next. A song then, from our island inspiration, to keep the summer going.

This song personified the summer of 1995 – and if you thought my recent return to 2005 took us way back, 1995 goes back thirty full years, thus leaving only snippets and an incongruous patchwork of memories. There was a train ride to Chicago during a heatwave, the last gasps of Madonna’s ‘Bedtime Stories’ era, and the first rumblings of all the drama that was about to ensue that fall. In the backdrop of all of it was this summer hit by TLC, gently percolating and offering warnings and melodies and water-laced atmosphere to cool us down. Summer cuts many ways.