Summer is over…

Zara blazer (similar)
Oak + Fort dress (c/o) (similar)
Zara sandals (similar)
Mango handbag
Zara sunglasses (similar)
Stella & Dot ring
Maris Pearl Co. earrings (similar)
Location: The Manitoba Legislature – Winnipeg, Manitoba

…and I’m not ready to say good-bye. I will always be a summer girl. I write a post lamenting the end of my favourite season every year around this time, without fail. And before I had this space, I did my lamenting in person. I’m sure I’ve told the story of my second winter in this space before. I was out in the snow with my dad while he shoveled snow in our carport. It was cold, and wet. There was little to do to keep myself entertained aside from pushing snow around. I looked up at my dad, wondering if he was thinking the same thing I was thinking: “Do you remember when it was summer?”

Dad was in his thirties and had lots of experience with summer. But in my relatively short life, I’d only lived through it twice. My concern that it might never come again was genuine.

That feeling of concern resurges every year when I look out my window and realise the leaves on the trees  turned orange seemingly over night. Most years, I get to spend the next few months living vicariously through my past self as I post photos from our late summer holiday. I pretended I was still in Florence for most of the last quarter of 2018. And last year, I managed to stretch my memories of Athens almost to Christmas.

This year, of course, is different. Everything about it, from how we spent the summer to the fact that there will be no backlog of summer memories to get me through the colder months as a result of that. I’m trying, as much as possible to look at it as a series of opportunities rather than disappointments. Instead of sharing my favourite summer outfits well into December, I get the chance to embrace fall fashion in a way that I historically haven’t done. Since we haven’t gone on any holidays, I was able to use some of my travel money to spoil myself with a truly fabulous pair of birthday shoes. This exercise in shifting perspectives is valuable, there is no doubt about it – but at times, it’s also totally exhausting.

So, just for today, even though summer is over, I want to celebrate my favourite season in all of its glory, without bothering to stop and remind myself that fall is a beautiful season in its own right. It is. Of course it is. But I will never love it the way I love summer. My love of summer is the love of a lifetime, unconditional and unrelenting. No other season will ever be as beautiful, to me. But maybe it’s the fact that it is so fleeting that adds to its charm leaves me, every year without fail, pining for its return.

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