The Summer is Officially Over

Today is my last day of summer. Tomorrow I start meetings again. On the 24th, school begins once more. I will say, however, that the final moments of any summer make me grasp passionately at any opportunity to show love to my family. It's as though I see something slipping through my fingers and, realizing that it is precious, attempt to close my fingers tightly on it, if only to squeeze as much out of the final grains of sand as I can.

Well, last night gave me a great opportunity. I was aided greatly by a cup of coffee that kept me wired well into the wee small hours of the morning (which now feels like quite a mistake). If you did not know, or did not notice from Google's home page text yesterday, the Perseids meteor shower hit its peak last night. I love shooting stars! There's always been something mystical about them, so I was very excited. I went out alone at first, trying to cure my caffiene high with a little rhubarb pie and Lienenkuegel's Berry Weiss (the BEST beer I've ever tasted; it's fruity and wonderful...a summer favorite). While I ate, I saw probably a dozen shooting stars. And no ordinary ones, either: they were so bright they outshone any star, so intense you could follow them all the way across the sky, and the trace of their streaking light could still be seen faintly as you returned to your original place of looking.

So even though it was 1 am, I grabbed the kids (and Heather, who came in a short while later saying, "I've seen two. I'm going to bed.") and laid them out on the lawn. Aydan woke enough to enjoy it and get almost as excited as me. We would turn and smile about the particularly bright ones: "Did you see that!? That was awesome!" Aydan asked at one point, "Are they really giant, bright balls of burning gas?" and I countered my normal, educational urge to inform him of the way things work and what a meteor actually was. Instead, I referred to "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" by C.S. Lewis, which we just finished reading. A retired star named Ramandu tells Eustace, a practical British boy who knows that stars are just gas in his world, that even in our world, a star is not simply that. One of the things I love about shooting stars is their rarity, their energy, their mysticality. Aydan and I shared that together last night until his eyelids began to droop and he said he wanted to go back to bed. Brennan, however, never woke up, despite my best efforts. Still I count it as a great shared experience.

One interesting thing I was reminded of last night is that Aydan rarely replies to the statement, "I love you" with "I love you too" but rather "I know." In an emotionally shallow way, it's kind of sad that he doesn't spit back affirmation, and never has, since he began speaking. However, if he truly does know it, how much greater a response is his? Even if my kids never love me, I will be satisfied if they respond to me that they know I love them. So I sat watching the shooting stars, feeling blessed and thanking God that I too know he loves me. More than anything that's what shooting stars mean to me.