Moving portrait at the end of summer

In the past week the temperature has dropped twenty degrees. The neighbor kids have returned to school, and to homework, and to reasonable bedtimes. Suddenly we're the only family outside in the evenings.

Summer is trying to be over.

September 3, 2009
Portrait of a self-sufficient swinging star

At the beginning of this summer she didn't know how to swing on her own. One of us would have to stand behind her, pushing and pushing and pushing. And at some point she crossed one of those milestones of childhood - she mastered the pumping. Now she'll swing and swing and swing so much that I can lie on the ground beneath her, watching her purple shoes and her poofy skirt and her pigtails fly up and back, buoyantly delivering her to kiss the sky.