Surfacing for Fall

While the inevitable scroll of first day school photos are infiltrating my Facebook feed, I am a woman still straddling the gap between these seasons. One child already well into her first month of a year-round middle school and a barnacle of a boy attached to my every move while we wait for his year to start.

Much of the hard work of making this year’s journal behind me, the nervousness of the printing and launch yet ahead. Movement in this gap is slow. It is navigating a season of anticipation while maintaining a semblance of daily structure for which there is no guiding force.

Pretending it’s still summer but with a newly imposed 4 o’clock punch in to be back for help with homework, emails from the office, and home-cooked meals—the time clock has reversed.

And then there is the packing up to do—the cleaning up from summer. The closing of the cabin or cottage on the lake, the bike rack reattached and loaded, the family dog bathed and dried before the drive back to the city… all of which is actual, and a metaphor of course. There is so much work in the reemergence.

So most of my day, these long weird days in the gap between summer and fall, is spent thinking of the work behind me and the work ahead. Of a summer filled with lake water and family and of the fast fall rush of Water~Stone and office hours spent at a desk other than my kitchen counter.

It is something like destiny that this happens each autumn.

That a new school photo is shared, a new tooth showing in her once gapped smile—that a new journal, our nineteenth, will emerge from the summer like a new and full breath after full submersion in a small, rocky lake—this too is inevitable and comforting. The surfacing is what sustains us.

Special thanks to our WSR summer crew: Anne Kelley Conklin, our trusty copy editor, Dylan Cole, studio manager at MCAD’s DesignWorks, Joe Letchford, our student designer this year, and Danielle Bylund, our production and social media assistant who has kept the ship afloat while the rest of us abandon it for the sweet relief of inflatables on tethered lines. Additional summer support generously comes from Christine Rousu, Ruthie Nelson, and Jenniey Tallman who are our lifeguards and watch for fresh water sharks and storms on the horizon. Thank you. Everyone.