Patricia Harrelson

The buckeye have turned rusty and crackling. Poison oak is turning too. The meadow grass is platinum blond with dark green tufts of tarweed starting to poke through. Blood red dragonflies skim over the surface of the waving grass. Today on my walk, I saw a squirrel hefting a huge pine cone up the trunk of a leaning tree.

Summer has more than a month left, but these are signs of the approaching fall. The parents of school age children are getting ready for a new semester. Some public schools start tomorrow though my grandkids won’t crack their books until after Labor Day. With the start of school, I’ll begin participating in homeschool and teaching a computer access class at the college. Julia and I are hoping for a late fall launch for The Right Sisters. My freelance assignments are piling up. So much to do as fall pushes it’s way into summer.

My Boddhisattva work sits as a backdrop to what I see and what I do. We’ve been doing a six-week study on the inevitability of death. The meditations are fierce, tender, and sublime. Every morning I sit for a half hour with the certainty of death. I get up from my cushion, feeling the closeness of death breathing quietly behind me. I try to stay present to what is worthy of my attention; what I’m willing to live and die for.

I cannot know what tomorrow will bring; I only know that nothing stays the same.