This happens every August.  My flowers play host to an astonishing number of bees, butterflies and hummingbirds.  It is almost a guarantee that a baby Praying Mantis will be discovered somewhere on or near the house.  The three foot State Fair zinnias take center stage in the gardens while the rosebuds prepare to open for one final encore.   The skies become deeper, clearer and bluer and I am fully delighted and mesmerized by the low, flat bottomed towers of fluffy cumulus clouds frequently floating above.  Sometime around mid August there are light breezes that glide nearly imperceptibly over my skin and for a fleeting moment, I feel a soupçon of a chill in the air.    

All of this August-ness, the slight chill in the air in particular, transports me back to high school and college.  The zinnias make me think about homecoming dances and corsages and football games.  The skies and clouds place me smack dab in the middle of any number of cross country meets.  And that gentle slightly chilled breeze against my skin gives me goose-bumps as I can easily recall the thrill I felt at the beginning of every school year standing at the precipice of clean slates, new beginnings, promise and wide open potential, future loves and friendships.

As August and summer quickly come to pass, I find myself wishing I could be as excited today about the potential of the next nine months as I was in my youth.  It is not easy at a boomer age to find opportunities to build community, find new challenges and embrace possibilities.

I just finished reading “The Midnight Library” by Matt Haig, a book about a young woman’s regrets over roads not taken.  And while I don’t have many regrets, perhaps three in number, I found the last few pages of this book resonated deeply with my August nostalgia.  (Thanks for finishing strong Mr. Haig.) 

Haig writes, 

“It is easy to mourn the lives we are not living.  Easy to wish we’d developed other talents, said yes to different others.  Easy to wish we’d worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga.

Of course we can’t visit every place or meet every person or do every job, yet most of what we’d feel in any life is still available.  We don’t have to play every game to know what winning feels like.  We don’t have to hear every piece of music in the world to understand music.  We don’t have to have tried every variety of grape from every vineyard to know the pleasure of wine.

We just have to close our eyes and savor the taste of the drink in front of us and listen to the song as it plays.

While we are alive we always contain a future of multifarious possibility.”

What’s a boomer to do?  Welcome September, cozy up to a little fire, make some s’mores and say a resounding “YES” to all the ‘multifarious possibilities’ this next season has to offer.