No one loses summer all at once
I love this time of year. Living in a college town, there's a hum of excitement as students return.
On Friday I helped cloak the M1s at the white coat ceremony put their white coats on them. They start medical school on Monday.
The garden is mature and cranking out cucumbers, peppers, and zucchini faster than we can eat them. The tomatoes, unfortunately, did not do well this year, so it looks like it'll be a salsa-less fall. The weather's mostly hot and sticky, but there are evenings cool enough to sit outside. It is the best of summer and the best of early fall at the same time.
The one thing I don't like: it was dark when I walked home on Tuesday. I got out a little late — a little after 8:00, so, a lot late — but that's not really why I noticed the darkness. In June, that same walk at that same time was in daylight. Here in Iowa we've lost about 80 minutes of light since the first day of summer, and it's going faster now, more than a couple of minutes a day.
Funny how that works. The light leaves a couple of minutes at a time, every day, and you notice none of it until one evening you notice all of it at once.
I suppose that's a metaphor for our lives. As physicians we get so used to the routine, and the grind, that we don't notice the slow whittling away of the other parts of who we are. Family time gets a little shorter. Workouts get a little shorter. "I'll go to the gym tomorrow" quietly turns into a month, then six. No single day feels different from the one before. Then one day you notice it's gone.
We can't control the loss of daylight, but we can notice it. And I'm not against seasons. A year is supposed to have them — a season for rest, a season for growth, a season when work takes more than its share. The garden knows this. Even the tomatoes get another year.
The trouble isn't being in a season. It's being stuck in one you never chose — the one that started so gradually you didn't notice it beginning, until you wake up and realize a lot of time has gone by.
The M1s start their new season Monday, and they know exactly what season they're in. Someone put a coat on them to mark it. The rest of us don't get ceremonies. No one cloaks you into the season where the gym disappears. You have to notice it yourself, or let someone else point it out.
That's what I'm here for.
— Ben
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