Thirty of One Hundred Summer Days

And just like that, the sweetest days of summer end. May and June, the soft, flowering months of the year flew by on the wings of songbirds. Here, there are clouds and rain today. It's muggy and buggy. Everything drips with moisture, big, fat water droplets on the foliage. The air and greenery hang heavy with wetness. Only a few days ago, the ground in my garden cracked from dryness after days and days of clear, beautiful, sunny weather. Most of it punctuated with soft, cool breezes. 

Things change so quickly. When I bought this place, the ground was covered with snow. I had no idea what the yard and garden looked like, except for a few places where what lay beneath peeked through. We walk through life with small glimpses of a future we cannot truly know until we are living its days and nights in the now.

I am given this day. What will I do with this gift? 

Drive into Philly and view the Mary Cassatt exhibition at the Art Museum? Clear up some debris in my garden and neaten everything up? Unpack more boxes in my new place and advance my moving in? Lose myself in the Zen of cooking and make and enjoy a fabulous meal? Watch for a break in the rain and go swimming? Call a friend and get together or talk on the phone? Write the checks for my monthly bills? Start a new book and enjoy a cup of tea while I read? Watch a movie? Pull out my paints and start a new work of art? Finish the short story I'm writing for the new anthology project? Go to Reading Terminal Market and walk among the stalls and maybe come home with something fun? Take the train to New York and surprise myself with the unexpected? All of it? Some of it? None of it? Something else?   

Pay close attention to where you stand/Before you know it, tomorrow has become yesterday,/Wandering (through life) goes so fast. Pay close attention to what you receive/Which is a hundred summer days a year,/And tomorrow is the second. (Cai Lundgren, translated by Imelda Almqvist)

I think back to the poem that inspired this writing theme and revisit some of its lines. Awareness remains the path to cultivating joy in living, to cultivating presence, to experiencing each day in all its fullness and beauty. Even if the beauty of the day is achingly painful. It may be that I spend this day in reflection, cultivating awareness. It's easy to let it slip away as the days fly by and we lose ourselves in the busy-ness of our lives. 

Tomorrow Has Become Yesterday is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience. 

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.