Nothing is different with the boys this late summer; what's changed is me. I know I've belabored this point a bit lately, but our many transitions are messing with me. I've spent the last couple weeks trying to sort out how exactly we ended up here and wishing for a time machine to travel back to a period when life felt more predictable.
One of the changes I have yet to write about is our recent decision to leave the Catholic church. Perhaps I'll delve into that in a more in-depth fashion sometime soon, but I bring it up now, as it seems to serve as an allegory for the dilemma I'm facing.
Mark and I had long felt that we weren't in the right place in Catholicism. We felt other, like we didn't fit there. We struggled with many disagreements with Church teachings but soldiered on nevertheless, attending Mass regularly, bringing up our kids in the faith formation program, taking them through the sacraments.
It was Mother's Day. The unforgettable sermon of Mother's Day 2015. The deacon was delivering the homily that day. He talked first of the racial riots and protests in Baltimore. He spoke of the anger they displayed, righteous anger, he clarified, but anger nonetheless and therefore wrong. He went on to rail about the need for the government to stay out of religion.
I couldn't get past the wrongheadedness of it all. I don't long to court controversy, but I think some civil disobedience is in order in the face of the current state of race relations in our nation. And maybe the government needs to stay out of religion, but really I'm more concerned about keeping religion out of the government.
We haven't been back since. We've found a home, for now, at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. I'm not sure if it will be our permanent faith community, but for now it's a place we can explore what we want for our family, what we want to teach our kids.
I realize this was a long walk to get to my point, but here it is: it would've been so much easier to stay. Yes, our reservations would have lingered, but it would have continued to feel safe. And comfortable. These two attributes are incredibly important to me.
I simultaneously long for lost familiar and know that on some level it was no longer what was right for me. Throughout this summer I've struggled with the same in all the major facets of my life: the change our dog's presence has brought, our move, my angst about my new semester of school beginning.
I spent the first months of the year, as usual, just wanting to survive the winter. In spring, the time of new life, Mark and I began to dream about change: a puppy, maybe a new home someday (but never did I think then that would come so soon). Summer is the halcyon time of year, the childhood of the seasons. We grappled with the reality of that puppy and set into motion a plan to move. We began to look at houses in July. We still had so much summer left.
Oh, how endings tug at my heart. There's nothing like the end of summer to remind me how finite life is, how few precious summers I have to share with my boys when they're still boys, still young.
Autumn is adulthood. I am in the autumn of my life. It's time to get back to business, with the kids and me heading back to school. It's fitting that this is the season that we have to reckon with the hard part of moving: both the time and energy demands of the actual move and the sorrow of saying goodbye.
Comfort is a beguiling friend, but it is not a reason to stay, to remain unchanged. I may still wish for spring and summer, but autumn is calling. It is the season, the season for change.
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