Pumpkin and cinnamon scents fill store aisles of orange leaves and turkeys, marking the beginning of my favorite shopping season. Halloween cats, witches, and ghosts announce the next upcoming holiday, with Christmas décor soon taking over every available store shelf, squeezing out Thanksgiving pumpkins and autumn foxes. As much as I adore the holiday shopping season, squirrels and hedgehogs and acorns and cornucopias, it signals the end of summer, but more importantly, the end of my creative free time. Because next to those pumpkins sit notebooks, pencils, lunch bags. As of this writing, I have three weeks and one day left before I return to work.
It’s not the dread of returning to work. It’s not even the loss of my writing time or the inability to take lunchtime walks with the dog or snuggle with the cat intermittently while I write. It’s not even the energy I’ll lose once school begins—an introvert who must deal with students and staff all day long zaps much of my strength. It’s not even the cramming in of cleaning, laundry, errands, and all the whatnot of life within the workaday routine.
It’s the passing of time.
Fall leaves means summer is over. Fall leaves signal the upcoming winter. And then Christmas. And then the beginning of the New Year. And then winter eventually fades into spring, where the countdown to the end of the school year begins again.
And then another year is gone again.
In the crutch of middle age, time needs to pass more slowly, yet science has revealed in some Sheldon Cooper way that as we age, time passes more quickly. I don’t understand it, but I know I feel it. Even when I make a conscious effort to appreciate those first few weeks of summer, to soak in the sun with awareness, to use my free time with gratefulness, to enjoy the mornings of rolling out of bed without watching the clock, and the joy of shopping on a weekday morning before stores become busy, summer is nearing its end, July saying adios as August says hello.
I’m running out of time to do all the things I want to do.
I’m currently in the midst of a project—a joyful one, but one that demands more time than I have to give with these last couple weeks of summer. I have yet to finish the memoir I set out to edit and polish, even though I’ve read it three times since school ended. I even prepped this spring, knocking off a half dozen “summer” projects before Memorial Day. Yet I still haven’t finished all that I’ve wanted. It’s this realization that leads me to dread the upcoming school year, when eight hours a day will be taken, and with it, some—hopefully not most—of my weekday energy.
In my thirties, such time seemed infinite. No invisible stopwatch hung over my head, seconds ticking away as a reminder of my mortality. Having a mom who died of cancer at 57 and a biological grandmother who died of cancer at 47…my time is finite, and my time might be shorter than those born without a cancerous gene speeding up their hourglass.
It’s reconciling this loss of time with the new beginning of a school year. I don’t feel bad for admitting that if I could afford not to teach, I most definitely wouldn’t. I’m not lazy or ungrateful. While I admit my passion for teaching has waned over the years due to a myriad of factors, most of which are not in my control, I still enjoy my students (most, anyway). I cannot live without writing and literature and history—I even practice what I preach, spending most of my free time writing and reading. It’s the time that passes, the time I cannot control, the time I know is becoming more and more limited with each season, each school year, that I struggle to embrace. If I only had a few more weeks of summer, or a few more days of fall…winter is the only season I wave goodbye to without sentimentality.
But I know, as I look out my window, and see my fountains running, the umbrella up on my table, the grass green, even feel the heat of the sun seeping through the windows, that I will soon look out those windows and see the dead leaves cover my lawn, my fountains and umbrella out of sight in the garage until spring, and feel the chill of the air seeping through my old windowsills. And then even more time has passed, and then what? Will I still have unfinished projects calling out to me to complete before it’s too late? Will I berate myself on lazy days? Will I resent a job for stealing my time? Even being mindful has its setbacks, a constant reminder that this moment will vanish, as will the next and the next, and one of the moments will take you with it.