“Instead of going rigid, I go calm. I center down wherever I am; I find a balance and repose. I retreat—not inside myself, but outside myself, so that I am a tissue of senses. Whatever I see is plenty, abundance. I am the skin of water the wind plays over; I am petal, feather, stone.” ~ Annie Dillard while stalking muskrats at Tinker Creek

There are four small butterflies hovering over the withered, late summer blooms in our little garden in front. At this point in the season, they are the most cheerful things out there.

If I were Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974) writer Annie Dillard, I would’ve looked up what type of butterfly they are, and I could tell you their Latin name. (She couldn’t google back then; I could if I had more of that “holy curiosity” Einstein warns us to hold on to.) If I were her, I would have investigated what these particular butterflies eat and what eats them, their mating habits, whether they carry any parasitic insects and where they lay their eggs. I also would’ve won the Pulitzer Prize.

Alas, Annie Dillard I am not.

Since this merry winged quartet is hanging around only fifteen feet or so from my front door, greeting me several times a day as I cut through the garden lugging in groceries or Sadie or both, I have grouped them in a decidedly non-scientific category, a sentimentalized species called All Things House. For the last few weeks I’ve made pets out of them, sort of, deciding their wild frenzy of fluttering is just for me, an extension of the home I love to come back to. I have an affection for the sound of my step on the wooden porch, the very feel of the pretty but cantankerous crystal doorknob, and, now, the butterflies.

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“Ah, summer what power you have to make us suffer and like it.” ~ Russell Baker

“Tomorrow at this time it will all be over,” my Nana used to say every year at some point on Christmas Day. I hated that.

School starts in the morning, and as I counted down the weeks, which quickly became days,  and today the days became hours, I didn’t utter a word to my brood, but every bone in my bone was aching with, It’s over, summer’s gone…

No more late-night canasta lessons (the grandparents taught the twins and they’re teaching us), no more pancakes in our pajamas at nine-thirty, no reading marathons that go on all afternoon. We’ve gone through four cans of sunscreen spray and gallons of ice cream and half a box of Band-Aids, and we’re the richer for it.

Usually I am the mom who watches the school bus pull away, trying not to do a victory dance right there in the driveway. Summer with three kids, one of them with special needs, can be tricky, to say the least.  This is especially true for a mother who loves to write to the sound of a clock ticking on the mantel and take long walks alone and can’t stand tripping over toys all over the floor. And I’m no fan of hot and humid—who is by the end of August?

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“Here at the magic hour
Time and eternity
Mingle a moment in chorus
Here at the magic hour
Bright is the mystery
Plain is the beauty before us
Could this beauty be for us?”
~ from “The Magic Hour” by Andrew Peterson and Don Chaffer

Dipping her toes into the water, Lanier, wearing huge movie star sunglasses to match her Grace Kelly-style bathing suit, sipped her frozen coffee concoction and wondered out loud if 18^th century Gothic novelist Ann Radcliff had ever been discussed in a poolside setting.

“Maybe not since the 1930s,” said Jenijoy, who had orchestrated the afternoon at a friend’s pool for our little book club.

“I can’t even see Laura and Lanier over there because of Rachel’s hat!” interjected Louise. The hat, a big white floppy affair, made Rachel look like a “moonflower,” Lanier said.

But it wasn’t Rachel’s fault—Jenijoy is the one who supplied the sun hats. And fluffy white beach towels. And 1960s loungey type music and frozen grapefruit aperitifs and a table set with vintage linens and glassware. And no afternoon at the pool is complete without giant pink caladium leaves and ferns floating elegantly in the water.

We are a quirky assemblage of six that sets out to make pimento cheese sandwiches and 95 degree heat somewhat glamorous. We try, anyways.

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My pantry is as respectable as any other youngish suburbanite’s—stocked with whole wheat flour, agave nectar, organic peanut butter, flax seeds. But, from time to time, on the bottom shelf toward the back, I’ll slip in a dirty little secret: Chips Ahoy, Cheetos, even Pop Tarts.

I can’t help it. I am a child of the seventies, a beautiful time to be a kid, when moms packed things like Twinkies in lunchboxes and Tang was considered nutritious. At least on TV, Stove Top stuffing meant “I’m staying,” and Entenmann’s donuts were, in some houses (alas not mine), considered an acceptable accompaniment to scrambled eggs. Nobody worried (much) about MSG, trans fats or corn syrup. We just ate.

Today, I think if somebody served me, for the first time, a steaming bowl of Hamburger Helper, I’d think it was disgusting. But that powdery, phony beef stroganoff taste rings familiar. It’s grandfathered in.

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“Christ above me, Christ beneath me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.”
~ from St. Patrick’s Breastplate, 5th century

My head is still reeling from this past weekend’s conference hosted by artists who are Christians. I have a notebook full of scribbling and a full heart, too. My cup was running over. In fact, as my dear friend, L., said, it was like “drinking water from a fire hydrant.”

It got me to thinking… too many things to ever hash out here. But there is one theme that has been echoing through my mind for the last year. The beauty of it breaks my heart. And yet it’s so obvious: God is everywhere.

Most of us learned that in Sunday school when we were four, I know. But somewhere along the way, without even realizing it, we forget. We deny. Or we fail to see.

We are not living in a Godless age. There’s no such thing.

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“Remember if you are alone in the kitchen, who is going to see you?” ~ Julia Child

Not all TV is bad. After what I experienced tonight, I would say to those without one: Get thyself to a Best Buy.

The twins are way into the Food Network—it’s the only thing they watch. While I fail to see the entertainment value, my stomach has reaped the rewards.

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 “The dusky glen laid cool hands on him. He rolled up the hems of his blue denim breeches and stepped with bare dirty feet into the shallow spring. His toes sunk into the sand. It oozed softly between them and over his bony ankles. The water was so cold that for a moment it burned his skin. Then it made a rippling sound, flowing past his pipe-stem legs, and was entirely delicious.”  ~ Jody at the spring in Marjorie Rawlings’ The Yearling

Last night was a victory against my worries over our waning attention spans. I read The Yearling to Emma and Maggie for more than an hour. So engrossed were we that we could’ve kept going, but the spouse came up in his pajamas and announced the beginning of Mad Men on TV. My throat was as dry as toast, and he bribed me with a cup of tea, so I shut the book despite the girls’ groaning.

It’s delicious to be so absorbed in a story. I don’t like what I fear spending time on the computer or playing Wii or even watching the cooking channel might be doing to our brains. The twins know to ask their dad, when possible, to do these things, as I almost always say no. “Go outside!” I bark. But it’s 120 degrees in the shade, so they trudge in after ten minutes and go back to the tower of library books on their bedside table.

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