Where Did The Summer Go?

As I sit here on the evening of the first day of autumn, watching this year’s potato crop being harvested, I can’t help but ask, “Where did the summer go?” Up here in The County we joke that “I overslept one day in May and missed the entire summer!” Still every year we watch the leaves turn color, begin cleaning our shotguns and rifles, and face the fact that in two months (a mere eight weeks) we could be dealing with our first snowfall of the winter. I realize that since June I have done barely a single paragraph of writing and do a mental inventory of what I accomplished since June.

There were a number of appearances, eight at Thursdays On Sweden in Caribou, one in Freeport, 4th of July in Belgrade lakes with several other Crime Writers. There were three appearances at Aroostook County libraries and The Potato Blossom Festival in Fort Fairfield–and then there was the thing that consumed the greatest block of my time. On June 6 my nephew passed away in Florida. Usually a funeral would only take a few days, but not this one (sometimes I think that all it would take to complicate a roll call in a one-man submarine is for me to be involved).

Richard, or Rick as we called him, was fighting cancer and in strong denial of his inevitable demise. He was a life-long bachelor with no children and more importantly no will. His mother, my 88 year-old sister-in-law, had no idea how she was to handle things. You’ve heard the expression “Once a Marine; always a Marine”? I of course saw her dilemma and rode to her rescue. What I assumed would take a week, two at the most, is still an open issue. Dealing interstate with this stuff will drive one to the nearest bottle of Makers Mark! It is now September 22 and we have finally made enough progress that we can see the end of the process…

Guess what? I just found out where my summer went! Now that fall is here I hope to have some  time for myself–once I finish winterizing the house that is…