The End of Summer

It’s a dangerous game to rush the time, you blink, and it’s all gone in what feels like an instant, but I can’t help myself.

Summer has always been intense, abundant, and lived to its fullest—heat-soaked nights, cold champagne, sweaty sex at midday, honey and salt in the air, meals eaten outside, and a freedom that belongs only to the months when the days stretch endlessly and the night are warm with asphalt heat.

Last year, I was in Albania with my girlfriends drinking wine and eating peaches, swimming in salt water, watching Acapulco. I was sailing in Sweden, eating smocked salmon and drinking beer. I was in Spain picking flowers and dipping feet in the sea (it was too chilly to swim up north). And the summer before that was Portugal—magic mushrooms on the tongue, the world bending and glowing, crocodile skin moving through faces, the beach a blur of light and sound, the body weightless and untethered. And the summer before that one, there was Italy and windsurfing and sex, so much sex.

Summer then was a feast.

This summer was not that. This summer did not feel like a summer at all. Fredrik was against me getting on a plane so late into the pregnancy, and I understood his concerns, so international travel was out of the question. I was not drinking, so no Aperols or beer gardens or sunset picnics. This summer was a different kind of summer, a summer of adulting, perhaps? It was pregnancy. It was birth. It was short walks outside with a baby. Days bled together. It was a summer I got my daughter, and that’s obviously worths more than all the travel and the drinking in the world, but still.

Mallorca in May, so doesn’t really count

Now, as the air cools and the light changes, summer feels almost gone, as if it never fully arrived. I feel sad about it in a way but must remember that summers will keep returning, year after year. They will not look like they used to, but perhaps will be even better?

My mothering inspiration is Julie O'Rourke. I can’t imagine childhood more fun than the one she creates for her children. I don’t know if any of it is real (I truly hope it is) or just for show (you just never know with instagram) but chose to believe and be inspired anyway.

It’s a dangerous game to rush the time, you blink, and it’s all gone in what feels like an instant, but I can’t help myself. I fantasise of sun-soaked days on the beach grilling periwinkles, Bean already walking or at least crawling. I imagine her swimming in the ocean, picking flowers and baking peach pies, having picnics by the lake. Fredrik is a wonderful man, as wonderful as a man can be in many regards, but he is not a picnic person. I am a picnic person and my children shall be picnic people. Bean doesn’t even smile yet, and I can not wait for her to smile. I know motherhood will be a whole new game once she does. I rush the time and I rush the time and I rush the time, for when she starts walking and cooking with me and crafting under the soft winter light, like Julie’s children do.

And it’s a dangerous game. I know it is. I just can’t help myself.

There is a loneliness in this summer too, and an intensity of a different kind. No crowd of girlfriends around the table, no drunken laughter until dawn. Sometimes I miss the old summers fiercely, and sometimes I don’t miss them at all. I know those days are not gone forever—they will come back in some form sooner or later. Yes, you can't step in the same river twice but at the same time life always finds a way to circle back, don’t you think?

Luckily, I love autumn in general and September in particular. It makes the end of summer easier, almost exciting in a way. The back to school feeling, the new beginnings. I am excited for the sweater weather, for Gilmore Girls rewatch, for pumpkin pies and apple crisps, for long afternoon walks. I bought a baby carrier in Burgundy—perfect for fall. I am making plans and writing lists. The lists of everything I call them: things I want to read, watch, buy, write, places to travel to, dishes to cook, songs to listen to, wishes to fulfil.

September is a promise. The air turns sharp and brisk, the light slants differently, and I feel the pull to begin again, almost as much as in January. September is a gift of starting over. September is an invitation: to return, to realign, to remember what matters. And what matter the most is, of course, to remember how lucky we are to be here.