Blink

It was a whilrwind of a fairly uneventful summer that started and ended in the blink of an eye.

The days were long and the weeks were short.

They were filled with the dizzying cacophony of little boy whoops and hollars as slender sticks sliced through the thickness of summer's heat.

It was a season of mastering marvelous maneuvers - how to ride a bike with no feet...no butts..."Look Mom - No Hands!". It was a summer of flying leaps into deep, dark waters...cartwheeling, flipping and tumbling across long, lush lawns.

It was a sticky summer of cool, creamy ice cream gliding down tan, smooth, arms and veiny popsicle rivers curving curiously...deliciously down soft round bellies.

It was a summer of chasing dogs and catching frogs...collecting dragon flies in glass jars with holes poked through the lid.

It was an experimental summer of observing spiders climbing up silken threads and watching piles of tiny ants scrambling over morsels of abandoned sweets - what will happen if we poke this stick at them...what will happen if we blow on them...what will happen if we slop some spit on them - watch them scatter...watch them flee...so fast...so furious...so delightfully devious.

It was a messy summer of mud wrestling after torential rains and splashing through giant puddles of water...digging holes to the center of the earth and constructing crumbly communities of coastal castles.

It was a magical summer of rainbows glistening in the spray of a garden hose...butterflies flitting and floating miraculously on a delicate summer breeze...finding long, lost treasures on an abandoned beach.

It was a summer without structure...without order...without rules and regulations.

It was a summer in which no one got lost...no one got injured...and everyone was blissfully, happily hot.

It was over in the blink of an eye.

School has re-opened and activities begun. The days are growing shorter and the weeks feel very long as the hectic schedule of reality shuffles us along.

We're following schedules and obeying rules...minding our manners and controlling our urges...yet in the blink of an eye someone got hurt.

Life happens in the blink of an eye - and so too shall it end.