The last Sunday in September. One of those just-post-equinox days where the angle of the sun streaks through a certain front porch window, at a certain angle, at a certain time, and you know. You know you’ve probably jumped in the ocean for the last time of the year. You know you’ve harvested your last cucumber, plucked your last cherry tomato from the vine. You know that though this day is warm and easy, days to come will soon be different. You know the earth is making her seasonal tilt away from the sun, and the sun away from you. You know that for all the pumpkin lattes and crisp weather, and harvest warmth, something else this way comes. Just one more swim, one more.
It’s hard to say what, exactly, is so telling about the bend of the sun through a certain window on a certain day at a certain time, but you know, it tells you—I’m about to be less, weaker, lower, slower, the wan cousin of my July self. It is, with certainty, a day to get outside.
Last year something got our tulips. The year before we’d seen dozens of bright, bold, sun-yearning bulbs pop skyward to greet the warmth. And the following year—nothing. Rabbits (likely). But I digress. Sun, window, slant, and I know. I coerce my two year old away from football (really, it’s a problem) with the promise of planting flowers. She obediently (surprisingly) pulls on her rubber boots and follows me to the yard. Perhaps she feels it too.
That sun, the angle. Let’s plant flowers, mama.
We dig the holes together, she lobs in the bulbs, we spread the dirt, she gives it pat pat, done. We plant two dozen bulbs, it takes an hour, her focus is impressive. As she tosses the last seed, insulates the last one against the next six months, stomps her little boot on top of the investment, I’m struck. She isn’t confused about where she’ll find the flowers. She’s so literal, yet—here we were, the earth looking just the same as before we started, and still, no inquiry for flowers, no confusion about how hole plus bulb plus dirt equals flower. This is profound to me, in this moment, on this Sunday. Of course there will be flowers, mama. Of course.
If she can trust in the tulip, I should try too. If her faith in the future is such that she can see the proverbial tulip through the dirt, I guess I can too. If she instinctively knows that though the earth tilts, and the sun weakens, and the days grow dark, it, of course, will happen again in reverse. That sun, the angle. Yes, something this way comes. Soon. For now though, I tilt my face upward, absorb all that the sun has left for me, and trust in the tulip. They’ll come.
And maybe just one more swim.
