This kind of day is for breathing deeply the summer air stretched thin against an inevitable autumn. My mom finds hope in these seasonal moments, she says the songbirds are gathering to remind us they will return with spring on their wings. Where would the world be without such hope?
But hope is a tricky thing. An illusion almost. Like a cloud. It holds promise as if it were solid (and audacious enough to be the basis for a presidential campaign), but hope can be neither solid nor audacious. Like a wish, like a cloud, hope can only hang in the air, weightless and magical.
Like most people, I have many wishes and hopes. Indeed, I fling them about recklessly, and somehow I am always surprised when their opposites land in my life. Perhaps life is easier for the more real and less hope-full (or at least the better prepared). And yet. There are the songbirds, gathering at the end of August, again and again.
