Dear summer, I really want to embrace you, I do, to lay in your oh so warm sun, gently caressed by the ocean breeze. I want to celebrate you, picnic style, with fresh lemonade, while dancing in the rain. And I want …to just be, relaxing into what glorious summer brings, despite the heat…

Only, here’s the thing: summer, for me- brings the much-needed reminder for a time of change and with it those tired uncomfortable feelings of figuring it all out.

When all I really want to do, is to stay snug and cool inside my cocoon, blissfully unaware; emerging with rose-colored glasses as I stay in my lane, but I can’t and I won’t, because deep down I know … the only way to embrace change is to become change…

 For summer is a time of self-reflection where I reevaluate what the year has brought, and with those thoughts, the pondering of highs and lows; inevitably asking myself, “have I made changes for the better?” Often, more times than not, my answer lingers in the air- unanswered …teetering above the great abyss of time- a sudden low dip on the measuring scale, alas, I come up short, in the very real realization- I may once again have procrastinated the year away…

 So, I retreat, staying inside, out of the heat, hibernating within, making the many lists of unnecessary to do’s as I see a future still unclear… Though, I cannot help to look out my window, and gaze upon the green trees, they’re so beautiful, and the endless blue sky, vast and void of anything, except a lemon yellow sun shining high above.

Still, I wait, as the evening summer storms alive in thunderous roars come and go. I know the first signs of Autumn follow soon, and the leaves will change to colors of gold. And soon, I will leave my cocoon, missing you already to embrace a new season and with it the unforeseen changes sure to come.

 Change is constant, and indeed a play on words, the one truth, that if embraced can lead to being the change you wish to see, but what does it really mean- being the change you wish to see? And are we all finally tired enough to see?

 Recently, a very wise friend shared with me a moment of awakening in his feelings of playing it small; and hoping he was finally tired enough to be the change he wished to see …and never look back again.

 Surely a beautiful and grand gesture on an even larger scale, yet, a humbling work of art gracing the wall, perhaps in a painting, the picture of fall, where a sky …seen once as only blue, now shines vivid pink in wondrous hues.

I’m tired too, the fork in the road, ever-present, just waiting, ready for me to take a step in my ode to summer and its sweet surrender to the prelude of embracing what is, what will be and what’s to come in the Autumn breeze…