{"id":2606,"date":"2013-09-29T13:42:16","date_gmt":"2013-09-29T17:42:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.katrinakenison.com\/?p=2606"},"modified":"2013-09-29T13:42:16","modified_gmt":"2013-09-29T17:42:16","slug":"september-afternoon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/september-afternoon\/","title":{"rendered":"September afternoon"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"nest\"A<\/span> Saturday afternoon in September, the last of them.\u00a0 Where the air leaves off and my skin begins, I can\u2019t tell. They are the same temperature, the same softness, the same. \u00a0There is no need for a sweater or shoes. I sit in the lawn chair by the garden, eyes half closed, listening to the low, incessant churring of crickets, the intermittent hammer taps of a woodpecker in the maple tree overhead, the chatter of birds, their wing beats as they come and go from the feeder, the acoustic hum of bees burrowing into the jeweled nasturtiums.<\/p>\n

It is that gentle, golden, in-between moment, no longer summer but not fully fall, either.\u00a0 The sun, already sliding down the sky, casts long purple shadows across the grass and, elsewhere, creates translucent pools of light. It feels nearly holy, this luminous glimmer shafting through the trees. Everything is softening, crumpling, fading.\u00a0 And yet, on this mild, sun-kissed afternoon it isn\u2019t an ending I feel, but a thrumming continuum of energy, an urgent, insistent turning toward life and change.<\/p>\n

Any day, the hummingbirds will depart our New Hampshire yard for warmer climes, but for now they are here still, a busy iridescent blur vibrating in and out of the purple petunias, intent upon visiting each cascading blossom.<\/p>\n

The sunflowers are spent, their heavy heads drooping upon slender necks. But I\u2019m in no hurry to cut them down, not till \u00a0the finches and squirrels have finished \u00a0feasting on the seed heads. \u00a0Today, they are like a crowd at a banquet — eager, gathering around, intent on the work at hand. A neighbor\u2019s rooster crows, heedless of the fact that dawn was hours ago.\u00a0 A red squirrel perches on the stone wall, chittering to no one.<\/p>\n

On the other side of the house, I can hear my son laughing with his friend, the thwack of the basketball in the driveway, occasional cheers for shots made or missed.\u00a0 Another day, and he and I will be on a plane heading south, delivering him to his new life at school.\u00a0 What I feel — hearing him play as he always has, seeing his suitcases open on the bed upstairs, making our shopping list for Target in Atlanta — is not the sadness of an imminent good-bye, but readiness.\u00a0 He is ready, too.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not his first leave-taking.\u00a0 Four years ago this fall he went away to boarding school.\u00a0 That time, the house rang with silence, as if a door had abruptly slammed shut on his childhood, on my day-in-day-out job as his mom, on the only life I knew.\u00a0 I could hardly bear the sight of his empty room, his chair, the shoes he\u2019d left by the back door.\u00a0 A year ago this month, we caravanned to Boston in my dad\u2019s borrowed pick-up truck, our old van, the car, all packed to the brim, and moved him into an apartment in Boston for a gap year of back-healing, working, growing up, figuring things out.\u00a0 Time well spent, as it turned out. And now, with two broken vertebrae mended<\/strong><\/a> and a year\u2019s experience of living on his own under his belt, he\u2019s eager to step into the long-envisioned future that has finally become the present.<\/p>\n

I<\/span> came outside an hour ago with a stack of mail to open, a bound galley to read, my phone in my hand, my mind buzzing with its own plans and busyness.<\/p>\n

But all I\u2019ve done is sit. \u00a0Listening.\u00a0 Feeling. Being.<\/p>\n

The quieter I am, the more I hear.\u00a0 The longer I am still, the more I see. \u00a0The more my heart opens, the more it fills. Doing nothing, I am perhaps doing the only thing that matters. To be here now is not only a gift but a practice. And I am rusty.<\/p>\n

\u201cRemember this,\u201d I tell myself:\u00a0 the rise and fall of boys\u2019 voices, a ball keeping time on pavement, birdsong, the bees’ tuneless canticle, the time-addled rooster’s piercing call. No need to hold on or to mourn, nothing to regret or anticipate.<\/p>\n

T<\/span>he pliant, golden leaves rustle overhead, like the whisper of a curtain being drawn slowly back.\u00a0 The sun slips out from behind a cloud. The day gives up its meaning slowly.\u00a0 Silence becomes its own kind of language.\u00a0 And this language without words yields its own kind of understanding.\u00a0 There is a secret key that unlocks the world:\u00a0 attention.<\/p>\n

In attention there is presence.\u00a0 In presence there is grace.\u00a0 And then, into that grace arrives a blessed revelation:\u00a0 it is enough, more than enough, to be here.\u00a0 To be quiet.\u00a0 To do nothing at all but sit in a chair in my front yard and receive what the world has to offer \u2013 the afternoon \u00a0leaning toward dusk, a finch poised on a sunflower, my sweet old collie sprawled in the grass beside me, a son turning the next page of his life, radiance everywhere \u2013 just now, just here, just for this moment.<\/p>\n

Already the light is draining away.\u00a0 A flash of red and a cardinal disappears into the pines, his graying mate bobbing along in his wake.\u00a0 The basketball falls silent.\u00a0 The back door opens, closes. A car engine turns over. Tires crunch down the gravel drive. The air grows cool.\u00a0 I gather my sweater, my flip flops, my untouched pile of work, and head indoors to flick on lights, shuck corn, make dinner for my husband and our son.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Saturday afternoon in September, the last of them.\u00a0 Where the air leaves off and my skin begins, I can\u2019t tell. They are the same temperature, the same softness, the same. \u00a0There is no need for a sweater or shoes. I sit in the lawn chair by the garden, eyes half closed, listening to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,35,40,8,11,14],"tags":[76,82,195,344],"class_list":{"0":"post-2606","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-gratitude","8":"category-letting-go","9":"category-mindfulness","10":"category-parenting","11":"category-parenting-young-adults","12":"category-soul-work","13":"tag-attention","14":"tag-being","15":"tag-grace","16":"tag-presence","17":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/600x600.png?fit=600%2C600","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}