Summers Dusk.

5:45 am and dark outside.  The sure sign of changing seasons for me is the dwindling morning light.  As summer fades into fall, this long dusk between seasons, the light in the morning is my litmus for falls progress as it encroaches onto our lives.  The leaves haven't begun to change, in earnest yet.  But there is a strange bite in the air in the mornings that seems to feel like fall mornings.  It is vague and barley discernible but present and very real all the same. 

I look forward to fall as a season of new beginnings.  My oldest son will start preschool and I'll be taking a couple of classes at the local community college as well.  My wife is working, part time, but this is new for us, a new beginning, and it began on the cusp of fall.

What I look forward to most are the cold sunny days of fall.  The barren trees set against a deep blue sky that slips into the ocean seamlessly on the horizon.  The bright sun acts in gentle juxtaposition to the crisp, cold, air and just off the beaten path the leaves gather in nooks and crannies and have found their resting place until the winter when the rain and snow will cover them and speed up their decomposition.

And this year is no different, I hold onto the last, long gasp of summer but look forward to the imminent fall season.  This year I am ready for the summer season to end, symbolically.  Our summer has been fraught with stress and change.  Our youngest son has spent time in the emergency room and our doctor trying to control breathing problems.  Our oldest has discovered a stubborn eagerness to assert his will over the world.  I have searched and been rejected for an uncountable number of jobs until this one (carpenter with a local remodel company) came available.  My wife has put up with unemployment, strong willed son, and the health problems of the other with admiration and grace--I can say with complete honesty that as a family we would not have made it through this summer with out her.  She, in turn, has also started working.  The summer has been chaotic, if not entirely busy, and we are ready for it to end.

In addition to the seasonal qualities of fall, it also grounds the schedules of our society and the free-for-all of summer is replaced by the constraints of school, it seems to settle our schedule and that gives us a certain freedom from the pressure of creating a productive summer.