Sunday Evening

"Nevertheless I am continually with you; you hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me with honor." — Psalm 73:23-24

It is Sunday evening and the middle of August is behind me.

I am in the chair by the lamp and the windows are open and the evening has a weight to it that July evenings did not carry. Not heaviness. Not sadness. Just the particular gravity of mid-August, when the air knows something the calendar has not yet said. The evenings carry a thinness now, a pulling-back, and I can feel it even with the windows open and the crickets going and Biscuit asleep at my feet.

The week held a letter I did not send. It held a psalm I sat with and a garden that is quieter than it was. It held a morning when my shoulder said something about the years and I listened. It held church, small and faithful and warm.

Tomorrow is Monday and the week ahead is ordinary. Dan called Tuesday and told me about Jack's last week of swimming. Becca called yesterday and we talked about nothing in particular, which is sometimes the best kind of call. Hannah and I will talk tonight or next Sunday or whenever she picks up. The rhythms hold. They are not the same rhythms they were in June, because the summer has its own calendar and the calendar is moving, but they hold.

The back-to-school signs are everywhere now. The grandchildren's summer is ending. In a few weeks the children will be back in the Sunday school room and I will be standing at the door waiting for them and the felt board will be ready and the crayons will be in the coffee can and the year will begin again. Not yet. But soon.

My mother used to say that August is not a month for starting things. She was right. I am not starting anything. I am finishing the summer the way the summer wants to be finished, which is slowly, from the porch, with the evening sounds and the last light and the dog at my feet and nothing to do that cannot wait until tomorrow.

Until next Sunday.