Labor Day comes and all I can do is plead for more time. More time to gather up overblown flowers into posies, to eat ice cream by the tall ships, to let the sun brown my shoulders. I am spoiled by the softness of warm nights and by the delight of waking with the sun.
I always find the last days of summer heartbreaking, and this year they've been all the more poignant. My father is fighting cancer with characteristic stoicism, confronting a huge operation last week with quiet confidence and stunning matter-of-factness. We (his adoring fans) dote on him as he recuperates in the little pink bedroom of my girlhood, propped up with pillows and surrounded by dogeared copies of Anne of Green Gables and The Witch of Blackbird Pond. How grateful we are to have him with us, and how often we find ourselves silently pleading with the gods - more time, more time.
Images: mine. Title: from Robert Frost's "Reluctance" (again).
