I was up in the night, at my desk, looking for a particular image in my desktop files. I couldn’t find it. But I spent an hour looking at summers past, beautiful days I thought would never end. This summer is a quiet one, or at least for now. In early August one family will come for 5 nights and then we’ll all go to the Island for Angie and Karna’s wedding, followed by a few days on an Island beach with Karna’s family and ours. It’s a beach John and I passed on our way to begin our freighter trip in April and we know that there are other places to explore in the area. So I’m looking forward to those things: a small wedding, time with family, ocean swims.
The photographs I was looking at in the night reminded me of how I think about time, the measure of it, the doubling back. I recently read an article that argued that time might be a mirage created by quantum physics. I’ve always thought of time as a series of repeating cycles, maybe a wheel (though I haven’t thought that through properly yet), but something that sort of progesses in a linear way but with repeated turns and returns, and does it ever arrive at a fixed point? Does it simply go round and round? I don’t think so, quite, though much of the space it travels is old space, space revisited. Last night the photographs had me remembering the summers as a wide and generous circle, with room for everything, for everyone. Our tent was the sky, our days open, the scent of ripening tomatoes, towels drying on the railings.
Sweet sleepy warmth of summer nightsGazing at the distant lightsIn the starry sky
Yes, there were starry skies. There still are but maybe it’s like the old question: if a tree falls in a forest and there’s no one to hear it, does it make a sound? If the skies are filled with stars but no one is sitting outside, do they glitter, do they tell their old stories? If there is no one there to wish on them, do they streak across the darkness and fall to earth? What if there’s no one to catch them?
They say that all good things must end someday
In time, in time. In the dark hours of the night, I looked at old photographs and it was as though those days happened so long ago and are still happening somewhere. From the distance I felt in those hours, I could almost remember them perfectly.
And when the rain beats against my window paneI’ll think of summer days againAnd dream of you
Note: the lines of song are from Chad and Jeremy’s “Summer Song”
...Theresa Kishkan 
A spiral rather than a wheel consistently speaks to me, but I do enjoy the art/writing that emerges from others who lean towards the wheel.
I wonder if you’ve read Daniel Mason’s North Woods, if your library is back to “normal” yet. It’s not one I’d planned on, but after sampling a few pages, I simply carried on with it. Its orchard(s) might resonate particularly for you.
Marcie, I just checked and our library has it — Large Print format (which suits me fine; it means I don’t have to wear my reading glasses). Thanks for the suggestion!
I loooove it when I find a LGPRT copy although I understand that libraries can’t always afford to add them to the collection (especially literary fiction). Don’t feel obligated if you decide to try it but it doesn’t grab you straight away; I’ve asked about other books/writers and felt certain you’d love them, here I’m less sure (but perhaps that’s only a reflection of my own initial uncertainty).
I’m glad to know about it. Thanks!