Mid point

Whenever possible, I prefer to read using natural light, so I have taken to opening the skylights on the side of the house where our dining room table is in the morning, so I can read the paper at breakfast by their light. Only recently did I realize that the one on the street side of the house is much more important than the one right over my spot, but that's another story.

At any rate, this morning, there was less light than usual, and I realized it's because we are just about midway between the summer solstice and the autumnal equinox: days are getting shorter. It's the south, it's hot, we're not close to the true end of summer, but school starts soon, we drop Natalie in New Haven in just two weeks, then Graham's school starts the week after that. And this proximity is pretty palpable.

In some sense I feel like it hasn't really been summer because we haven't had a true vacation. Six days in Boulder, sure, but that's pretty short and we didn't have the whole family there. Better get used to it, there will be more of that coming and that's just life.

On Saturday we drive north for what may be the last of our August visits to Larchmont, maybe (if we're lucky and the house sells in the fall) the last long stint in the house at all. If I haven't blogged about it, Mary's mom is selling the house they've been in for 45ish years and moving to the retirement community where she worked for many years. She had resisted moving to what feels like the office, one can understand that, but her accelerating health events finally brought it home to roost that it was time to suck it up and move.

Underlying all of this is a sense of time accelerating, a natural codicil of aging, and thus the need to cultivate an appreciation of the passing of time itself and little good things. Like kicking Adam's ass at tennis yesterday.