Grandma looked out the window at the way the sunlight lay across the yard and filled the apple trees with gold and echoed the same words:
“Farewell summer. Here it is, October 1st. Temperature’s 82. Season just can’t let go. The dogs are out under the trees. The leaves won’t turn. A body would like to cry and laughs instead.” Clouds passed over the lawn. And when the sun came out, in the pantry Grandma almost whispered, “Summer, farewell.”
…
A wind came up outside and shook all the trees, and every leaf, every last one fell off and blew across the lawn.
“Summer’s over, Tom.”
Tom listened.
“Summer’s done. Here comes autumn.”
“Halloween.”
“Boy, think of that!”
“I’m thinking.”
They thought, they slept.
The town clock struck four. And Grandma sat up in the dark and named the season just now over and done and past.
Ray Bradbury
“Farewell Summer” (sequel to “Dandelion Wine”)
On my way upstairs after doing laundry, one of those voices from deep down sent a note:
You can’t truly live your life until you love every part of it.
I don’t know exactly what that means since these notes don’t come with explanations. I don’t even know if it’s true, but it felt true in that moment. These notes do come with an air of authority.
Those who have had bad things happen to them probably wouldn’t agree, maybe couldn’t agree, that you can love every part of your life, no matter how true it sounds. And everyone has had something bad happen to them. A lot of bad stuff is happening to us right now. But there it was, note to self, hanging over my head, refusing to be ignored.
Maybe it issued forth because at that moment I was loving every part of my life, even the laundry, even the goddamn cicadas, which I thought were gone and now were back. So obviously loving every part of my life is not about everything in my life going the way I want.
Maybe the note was trying to say, “It is possible to love every part of your life, good or not, and that makes it possible to live your life fully, no regrets, no conditions because living it is enough.”
As you can see, I’m a lot wordier than my inner voice. And I’m not sure if that’s what it meant.
Maybe you can only live life fully in moments like this, and in those moments, all of your life feels as if it were worth living, even if you don’t know why, even if your case might not hold up in a court of judgment. All of it brought you here, after all — how it got you here you can’t really say. But here feels full and good and worth all that living.
Maybe it’s simple gratitude. You’ve had a life! — whatever that so-called life is worth, and in such a moment, it’s worth plenty.
What about the panhandler holding his crumpled cardboard sign, whose living brought him to this moment, dodging cars to make his plea? I don’t know and can’t say. I hope everyone has moments where they feel their living’s worth. And maybe loving our life, the whole enchilada, is what makes such moments possible.
Is this our survival instinct? Is it the voice we hear at the end of our rope? Well, in my case it was only at the end of doing my laundry, so no, not always. Most of us strive to live a worthwhile life, but maybe we don’t have to “earn” it. Maybe this is the voice of life itself, asserting its own worth, overruling all evidence to the contrary, or as poet Jack Gilbert once penned, issuing its “Brief for the Defense.”
Or maybe it’s just summer bidding farewell on this last day of August. Summer is my version of life at its fullest — not my life at its fullest necessarily, but life itself, which seems to have a spirit of its own. The end of every Summer is a poignant time, but the pang speaks to the worth. It is as if life itself were departing, with sweet sorrow, such sorrowful sweetness, confirming its goodness as it moves on.
It helped, I suppose, that the weather was perfect this Sunday, sandwiched by a three-day holiday weekend, and the White Sox actually beating the hated Yankees, and a beautiful wedding unfolding in Cheney Mansion’s gardens with the band playing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”— but that all happened after I finished the laundry and intercepted this note to self.
Yes, life looks pretty good on days like this, but there’s nothing wrong with appreciating the essential goodness of being alive any time, no matter the weather, even on rainbow-less days.
How could something as savory as life not be worth savoring? Summer, like the cicadas, probably hasn’t finished yet, but this seems to be its parting wish — and ours back at it:
Fare well … till we meet again.