I’ve noticed that evening comes earlier now. Rocking the baby to bed at 830 pm, it seems to be pretty dark out. These steaming days of late August will carry on into September as usual, but they are but the opening notes of Summer’s grand finale.

I welcome autumn. I won’t miss the humidity, or the mosquitoes. I won’t miss the stress of taking non-swimmers to the pool. I won’t miss these “relaxing” days of summer that, frankly, this summer, were not.

Maybe I just don’t know how to relax. Maybe I just can’t relax without my husband here to take care of all the worrying and fussing and the what-ifs.

At the grocery store yesterday, Katie had a non sequitor question: “Mommy, is it almost time for Halloween?” I told her no.

“Then why is all the Halloween candy out?” And I looked up from trying to keep Mary pinned to the seat while selecting bagels and checking my list and reminding myself not to forget the half-and-half which I did later, after all, forget. Sure enough, the seasonal display had heaps of orange and black wrapped treats.

“They do it to drive mothers nuts,” said a smiling woman pushing her own child-filled cart in passing. I then lost myself in thoughts of how brilliant these marketers were to put the candy out early, so you buy it so you don’t have to think about it any more, then you eat it, or you forget that you bought it, and you buy more – genius! I almost missed her second line, which I heard with perfect Doppler Effect:

“They’ll have the Christmas candy out before you know it.”

Oh, I hope so. More than I welcome the cool days of fall and the beauty of changing leaves and the comfort of a school routine and the return to hot food to warm chilly bodies, I long for the approach of winter and the return of my husband. May the days fly by.

He left seven weeks ago today. We have 19 more to go. It’s not that long; we’ve survived worse, I keep reminding myself. Not too long ago, seven weeks seemed like an eternity. Now, it seems like nothing compared to what I have left to do. In twelve weeks, seven weeks will again, likely, seem like an eternity.

But it will come. And then I will hope once more for time to stand still.