end.

word of the day: end \ˈend\ a point that marks the limit of something : the point at which something no longer continues to happen or exist

I have decided that the worst thing you can do as an overly sentimental person is have kids.  Suddenly the “This-is-the-last-Saturday-of-June-in-2014” moments bear greater weight when you’re not only feeling the need to make the most of them for yourself but also for the little person grabbing on to your ankles. 

The end of summer makes me feel sad, but not necessarily because I have to go back to work.  It’s sad for me because it marks the end of a period of time that I will never again recreate.  Summer days of just Lily and me are now a thing of the past and the year ahead promises more change than I can sometimes wrap my brain around.  Those two things coupled together turn me into a little bit of a nut case as I try to squeeze every ounce of memories out of a few short days. 

In the past few days, I found myself wanting to do all these things to “end summer with a bang.”  Lily and I were going to spend whole days together and get frozen yogurt and go to the splash park and read books and take advantage of all the things summer is before summer is not. 

Then I had this moment where I let myself off the hook.  I reminded myself that one more trip to the splash park wouldn’t make or break our summer together and that we could actually still get frozen yogurt together once school was back in session. 

It’s all part of the same story, isn’t it?  Sometimes I think I’m so quick to think of my life as individual chapters that I forget to think about the story as a whole.  That in the future moments of my life I’ll probably look back and think, “I’d rather be right here.”

It has been a good summer though—a summer that, per usual, came and went slightly surreptitiously. 

So, in sentimental fashion and in honor of the summer’s end, I’ve been spending my evening looking through all the things we’ve done. 

And, I’m okay with moving into the next chapter because I see now that it’s really just a continuation of where we are now.   Change is good [said the small voice inside my head].