I can see September from here
Today is the last day of the school year.
Tomorrow is the first day of summer. Of real summer. Mind you, we may be waiting a while longer in the Rocky Mountains for weather that resembles the season.
Despite all the warning signs that summer may actually be upon us, I can see September from here.
This morning I walked Rio to school for what may be the last time. Next year he’ll go to Lawrence Grassi Middle School, and though he says he’ll let me, I doubt I’ll be walking him to school very much. It’s too far, and Grade 5 is no place for a dotting father. I know it even if he doesn’t it.
It feels as if it was just a few days ago I walked him to Kindergarten for the first time. He was wearing his prized Scoobie-doo shirt and rode his scooter. I had just moved into my place in Fernwood so I drove up to the old house, parked, and Kat and I walked him there together.
I celebrate every single minute that I get to share with him on this earth. He is a gift. He is my heart’s delight.
Silas will still be at Elizabeth Rummel for three more years, and I bet that he’ll let me hold his hand for at least one or two of those, while he pontificates on the astrological projection of stars and the diet of duck billed platypuses as we toddle down the road. It will be just the two of us in September.
It’s all about letting go. From the very first moment it’s about stepping back, about yielding to time’s swift passage, about allowing them to grow and move on.
A few days ago I was in Burlington, Ontario, where I went to middle and high school. I was there for my father’s retirement party. I was the great surprise; the look on his face as I walked into the party was well worth the cross Canada flight. After 63 years of near daily work, he had sold the business he built with his own bare hands. Being with him at that moment was one of the greatest moments of my life; to give the gift of respect and recognition to this man who had worked so hard that my sister and I could live so well was very important to me.
We celebrated that passage together.
Just as Rio, Silas, Jenn and I will celebrate this passage too.
We let go. We accept change because to struggle against it would be foolish, ineloquent, and all-too-human.
The fact that we cannot see the simple truth that every single moment is ephemeral is part of the root of all suffering. That life is all magic-and-saying-goodbye evades us.
Summer comes, ready or not. The boys will be with us for four weeks of it. A week of that will be spent on the coast, camping with Jenn’s mom and dad, Ann and Paul, at Rathtrevor Provincial Park. Another week will be spent in Salmon Arm for the Legault family reunion. A weekend backpacking, and another just enjoying our home in the mountains.
I’ve made my choices and part of the result is that a summer too short to start with is cut in half.
Labour Day will be upon us, and the new school year – the real measure of any parent’s life – will begin again. I can see if from here. Book bags and lunches once more and walking Silas to school, not because it’s necessary (the kid could find his way back and forth across Canmore with his eyes closed) but because for 15 minutes I get to hold my son’s hand and listen to his stories. Maybe Rio will walk with Silas and me as far the Cougar Creek before he rides his bike into town and the next stage of the adventure. I’ll be glad for those opportunities. And I’ll celebrate every single new day that dawns with my family.
I can see September from here. It’s just far enough away that I can live each moment between now and then fully in the present, in awe of the wonder and the magic; aware that every moment is precious, made more so by the need to say goodbye.
