Editor’s Notebook: It’s early June, but only for a second

A fallen leaf, on an early Sunday morning in late May. (Dana Wormald | New Hampshire Bulletin)

She decided to wear her old Converse to the beach because, she said, her feet were not ready for flip-flops. It didn’t matter that the low tops were rumpled and discolored by time. The greater sin, in her mind, was to inflict pale toes upon an already suffering world.

There’s a thin line between easy grace and summer inhibition.

By the time we arrived at Lake Sunapee it was early evening, Saturday, but the beach was still full of families. Our two daughters, long past their pail-and-shovel days, were everywhere in their absence. That’s usually the case now for me and my wife, with our little family at the fork – connected, always, but newly divergent. As a result, our fresh freedom as parents feels a lot like the stress of misplacing something you can’t live without.

I guess that’s why I kept staring at her Chuck Taylors, set aside in the sand.

The thing is, I know better than to get caught up in symbols – because they’re often cheap. If you want it to, a torn flag can tell a story about a crumbling democracy, just as a lone lady slipper against a forest stone can stand as the whole of living. And the symbolism of those timeworn sneakers, the ones she picked up back when the girls were never going to stop being children?

They don’t come any cheaper than that.

The weekend before, it was a dewy leaf. I spotted it while walking back from the river in the early morning, just as the sun was beginning to assert itself. Overnight, the wind had scattered a few new maple leaves, which had collected droplets that were rendered as little suns themselves. With creaking and cracking limbs, I got as low as I could to see it all as the robins might. I snapped a photo, and then I kept thinking about the image, all day, something I had probably seen a million times: a wet leaf in late May.

But, in truth, I hadn’t really seen it before, ever. At least not like that, with attention. I’d like to believe that’s some kind of wisdom, hard won over thoughtful decades, but more likely I’m just a guy trying to close a fist around the season, around time.

Mea culpa.

Our younger daughter graduates high school on Saturday, and her big sister turns 21. On the same day, my wife and I will celebrate our wedding anniversary. June 8 has always been a big day for the family because of the birthday/anniversary combo, but the addition of a graduation ceremony feels like a lot of milestones to hang from a single calendar box.

What a day it promises to be.

That night, the four of us have reservations for dinner. It’s a nice restaurant, one we’ve never been to together, and it’s right next door to the place we always went on special days when they were little. I make no predictions about how the meal will go, or who will be in what kind of mood, but I’m confident there will be an undercurrent of joy – confident because that’s how it’s always been.

Even when I failed to notice.

Impermanence is fundamental to joy – at some level all of us understand that. But sometimes the speed at which time moves through and beyond us can be disorienting. And then, dazed, we end up staring at a pair of old sneakers on the beach, unable to look past them to where a little girl sits with her pail and shovel.

“It’s a damn short movie,” James McMurtry said. I guess that’s what I wanted to say, too.

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