Earlier this week, the sun set at 8:00 PM. It won’t happen again until late April. From here, the days get shorter, the temperatures fall, and eventually the leaves do, too.
Labor Day weekend marks the unofficial end of summer here in the upper Midwest, and every year it seems to ask the same question: what was this season actually about? This summer, the answer was easy. The move.
It took the whole season and most of my attention. Preparing the old house, sorting through decades of our stuff and generations of family stuff, selling the house, moving, closing, learning a new neighborhood, and figuring out where the coffee maker goes. For a few months, everything else waited its turn.
Fall feels different. It turns the attention forward again, toward what comes next instead of what just got finished. New goals, new routines, winter coming, and the work of looking ahead instead of simply settling in.
Through both seasons, though, one thing never cared what I was focused on. Ginger doesn’t understand summer or fall, moves or goals. She just knows that 6 AM means walk.
She looks at me, then at the door. Back at me, then back at the door, tail wagging the whole time, as if she’s asking nicely. Then comes the stretch, front paws forward, rear end in the air, and the message changes: I’m not giving you a choice. You must walk today. If not for yourself, for me.
So we walk, now on a new path complete with strategically timed neighborhood sprinklers trying to take us out. It is not the walk we had before, but it is close enough, and most mornings, close enough is the whole point. For Ginger, there are new smells, new fire hydrants, and new trees. For me, there is the same thing there has been every day for more than six years: 10,000 steps.
Two thousand three hundred seventy-nine days, and counting. The focus keeps moving, from the move behind me to whatever comes next, but the streak doesn’t. It is just there underneath it all, the same way Ginger is at the door every morning, whether I’m thinking about a moving truck, a new goal, or nothing much at all. And we’re still walking, trying to enjoy the last moments of summer and the beginning of fall.
Sireadh Toileachas 