Two weeks left.

Two weeks of sweet corn and swimming suits and bare toes and zinnia bouquets and light like this in their hair and all the days are adding up to make years.

And before the sun even comes up, the clock ticking so loud in my ears, there’s this rolling over toward the Farmer, this desperate murmur,

Only two more weeks left of summer — what are we going to do?

He doesn’t even open his eyes.

Be grateful

and he draws me so close the words brush my ear,

those words of every soul whisperer,

and you don’t even miss a beat when gratitude to God is the beat of your heart.

And before the sun goes down, kids carry cobs up to the side porch and we sit there in this circle husking and I keep looking round at their sun-kissed faces, that’s all I can think, my hands all full of these husks:

It’s never the wasting of time that hurts so much as the wasting of ourselves.

There are husks and silks all over the porch. Who cares what the calendar says?

Calendars can con: there are really only as many days left as you actually really live. In the end, everyone ends up at the length of their lives — but only a few live the whole width of a life.

And that night, after everyone leaves the dinner table, I’m still sitting there —

eating the last of chocolate crumbs right off the plate.

Free Printable of the Seize-the-Last-of-Summer Plan

The Easy Before-Summer-Ends Plan
{14 Things to Do in the Last 2 Weeks}

Just one a day:

1. Make a fruit pie.

2. Eat under stars.

3. Walk through one woods.

4. Dip both feet in water.

5. Sing hymns around flame {choice: candles or campfire}.

6. Lick drippy ice cream.

7. Find a swing and swing high.

8. Pick a bouquet of wildflowers : set in sill. Or give it away.

9. Play one game of anything out on grass {frisbee, baseball, soccer, croquet, volleyball}.

10. Eat something fresh {from the garden or the market or your mother’s}.

11. Lay down on grass, look up and watch clouds for five minutes.

12. Go to a park and play until something in you feels lighter.

13. Open a window. Listen to the world. Slow. Still. Pray before that open window.

14. Sit with someone you love and watch the sunset. Say it out loud: Thank you.

 

Q4U:  How’s your summer been so far? How are you going to live the whole wide breadth of your life in these last few weeks of summer and not just its length?

Will you join in the conversation here? (Email and RSS Readers — come join the conversation here?)

Click here for this free printable that is available from our Free Tools Library.

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