Goodbye Summer Quotes

Same people. Same hellos and goodbyes. Same beginnings and endings. Same befores and afters.

I couldn't even be mad at him, because this was who he was. This was who he'd always been. He'd never lied about that. He gave and then he took away. I felt it in the pit of my stomach, the familiar ache, that lost, regretful feeling only he could give me. I never wanted to feel it again. Never, ever. Maybe this was why I came, so I could really know. So I could say good-bye.

We stood there, looking at each other, saying nothing. But it was the kind of nothing that meant everything. In his eyes, there was no trace of what had happened between us earlier and I could feel something inside me break. So that was that. We were finally, finally over. I looked at him, and I felt so sad, because this thought occurred to me: 'I will never look at you the same way again. I'll never be that girl again. The girl who comes running back every time you push her away, the girl who loves you anyway.' I couldn’t even be mad at him, because this was who he was. This was who he’d always been. He’d never lied about that. He gave and then he took away. I felt it in the pit of my stomach, the familiar ache, that lost, regretful feeling only he could give me. I never wanted to feel it again. Never, ever. Maybe this was why I came, so I could really know. So I could say good-bye. I looked at him, and I thought, 'If I was very brave or very honest, I would tell him.' I would say it, so he would know it and I would know it, and I could never take it back. But I wasn’t that brave or honest, so all I did was look at him. And I think he knew anyway. 'I release you. I evict you from my heart. Because if I don't do it now, I never will.' I was the one to look away first.

He came up and kissed me on my forehead, and before he stepped away, I closed my eyes and tried hard to memorize this moment. I wanted to remember him exactly as he was right then, how his arms looked brown against his white shirt, the way his hair was cut a little too short in the front. Even the bruise, there because of me. Then he was gone. Just for that moment, the thought that I might never see him again… it felt worse than death. I wanted to run after him. Tell him anything, everything. Just don’t go. Please just never go. Please just always be near me, so I can at least see you. Because it felt final. I always believed that we would find our way back to each other every time. That no matter what, we would be connected—by our history, by this house. But this time, this last time, it felt final. Like I would never see him again, or that when I did, it would be different, there would be a mountain between us. I knew it in my bones. That this time was it. I had finally made my choice, and so had he. He let me go. I was relieved, which I expected. What I didn’t expect was to feel so much grief. Bye bye, Birdie.

But I loved that house, and I hated to say good-bye. Because, it was more than just a house. It was every summer, every boat ride, every sunset. It was Susannah.

Autumn is leaving its mellowness behind for its spiky, rotted stage. Don't remember summer even saying goodbye.

The morning is full of storm in the heart of summer. The clouds travel like white handkerchiefs of goodbye, the wind, travelling, waving them in its hands. The numberless heart of the wind beating above our loving silence. Orchestral and divine, resounding among the trees like a language full of wars and songs.

Hellos are harder than good-byes

I am made for autumn. Summer and I have a fickle relationship, but everything about autumn is perfect to me. Wooly jumpers, Wellington boot, scarves, thin first, then thick, socks. The low slanting light, the crisp mornings, the chill in my fingers, those last warm sunny days before the rain and the wind. Her moody hues and subdued palate punctuated every now and again by a brilliant orange, scarlet or copper goodbye. She is my true love.

The Summer King stroked her cheek with his thumb. “Can you offer me your fidelity? Your heart and your body and your companionship for eternity? Do you want my fidelity? Either love me or kiss me goodbye, my Summer Queen.

The summer ends and we wonder who we are And there you go, my friends, with your boxes in your car And today I passed the high school, the river, the maple tree I passed the farms that made it Through the last days of the century And I knew that I was going to learn again Again, in this less hazy light I saw the fields beyond the fields The fields beyond the fields

All I ever did to that apartment was hang fifty yards of yellow theatrical silk across the bedroom windows, because I had some idea that the gold light would make me feel better, but I did not bother to weight the curtains correctly and all that summer the long panels of transparent golden silk would blow out the windows and get tangled and drenched in afternoon thunderstorms. That was the year, my twenty-eighth, when I was discovering that not all of the promises would be kept, that some things are in fact irrevocable and that it had counted after all, every evasion and ever procrastination, every word, all of it.

Jon gave Simon a patronizing pat on the shoulder. “I’m going to miss your witty repartee this summer, Lewis.” “I’m going to hope you get eaten by a spider demon this summer, Cartwright.” George slipped an arm around both of them, grinning maniacally and humming “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?

Saying good-bye, perhaps to her father -- her favorite person in this world. this is how she would remember him. Not by the sad unknowing in his eyes, or the grim set of his jaw as he led her to church, but by the things he loved. By the way he showed her how to hold a stick of charcoal, coaxing shapes and shades with the weight of her hand. The songs and stories, the sights from the five summers she went with him to market, when Adeline was old enough to travel, not old enough to cause a stir. By the careful gift of a wooden ring, made for his first and only daughter when she was born -- the one she then offered to the dark.

The whole summer stretched out before us, long, hot, endless. September flashed like a tiny red warning light in the distance, but if I squinted, I could ignore it. I decided to squint for a while. 'It's going to be wonderful,' I said.

September was a thirty-days long goodbye to summer, to the season that left everybody both happy and weary of the warm, humid weather and the exhausting but thrilling adventures. It didn't feel like fresh air either, it made me suffocate. It was like the days would be dragging some kind of sickness, one that we knew wouldn't last, but made us uncomfortable anyway. The atmosphere felt dusty and stifling.

Goodbye Curly. I'll see you next summer. Keep out of trouble, now, until I come back.

Air in the chateau clammy like laundry that won't dry. Door-banging drafts down the passageways. Autumn is leaving its mellowness behind for its spiky, rotted stage. Don't remember summer even saying good-bye.

There was nothing left for me to do, but go. Though the things of the world were strong with me still. Such as, for example: a gaggle of children trudging through a side-blown December flurry; a friendly match-share beneath some collision-titled streetlight; a frozen clock, a bird visited within its high tower; cold water from a tin jug; towering off one’s clinging shirt post-June rain. Pearls, rags, buttons, rug-tuft, beer-froth. Someone’s kind wishes for you; someone remembering to write; someone noticing that you are not at all at ease. A bloody ross death-red on a platter; a headgetop under-hand as you flee late to some chalk-and-woodfire-smelling schoolhouse. Geese above, clover below, the sound of one’s own breath when winded. The way a moistness in the eye will blur a field of stars; the sore place on the shoulder a resting toboggan makes; writing one’s beloved’s name upon a frosted window with a gloved finger. Tying a shoe; tying a knot on a package; a mouth on yours; a hand on yours; the ending of the day; the beginning of the day; the feeling that there will always be a day ahead. Goodbye, I must now say goodbye to all of it. Loon-call in the dark; calf-cramp in the spring; neck-rub in the parlour; milk-sip at end of day. Some brandy-legged dog proudly back-ploughs the grass to cover its modest shit; a cloud-mass down-valley breaks apart over the course of a brandy-deepened hour; louvered blinds yield dusty beneath your dragging finger, and it is nearly noon and you must decide; you have seen what you have seen, and it has wounded you, and it seems you have only one choice left. Blood-stained porcelain bowl wobbles face down on wood floor; orange peel not at all stirred by disbelieving last breath there among that fine summer dust-layer, fatal knife set down in pass-panic on familiar wobbly banister, later dropped (thrown) by Mother (dear Mother) (heartsick) into the slow-flowing, chocolate-brown Potomac. None of it was real; nothing was real. Everything was real; inconceivably real, infinitely dear. These and all things started as nothing, latent within a vast energy-broth, but then we named them, and loved them, and in this way, brought them forth. And now we must lose them. I send this out to you, dear friends, before I go, in this instantaneous thought-burst, from a place where time slows and then stops and we may live forever in a single instant. Goodbye goodbye good-

The words make sense, but deeper than the words is the truth. She's right. If Mabel's talking about the girl who hugged her good-bye before she left for Los Angeles, who laced fingers with her at the last bonfire of the summer and accepted shells from almost-strangers, who analyzed novels for fun and lives with her grandfather in a pink, rent-controlled house in the Sunset that often smelled like cake and was often filled with elderly, gambling men—if she's talking about that girl, then yes, I dissapeared.

Summer’s gone today; I wished a wish that it would never go away, but summer told me it couldn’t stay. So I said my goodbyes, with tear-filled eyes, and waved my farewell to the blue summer skies.

I guess this is it," Chelsea said. "The beginning of good-bye.

So we die before our own eyes; so we see some chapters of our lives come to their natural end.

For a while we pretended That we never had to end it But we knew we'd have to say goodbye You were crying at the airport When they finally closed the plane door I could barely hold it all inside Torn in two And I know I shouldn't tell you But I just can't stop thinking of you Wherever you are You Wherever you are Every night I almost call you Just to say it always will be you Wherever you are I could fly a thousand oceans But there's nothing that compares to What we had, and so I walk alone I wish I didn't have to be gone Maybe you've already moved on But the truth is I don't want to know Torn in two And I know I shouldn't tell you But I just can't stop thinking of you Wherever you are You Wherever you are Every night I almost call you Just to say it always will be you Wherever you are You can say we'll be together Someday Nothing lasts forever Nothing stays the same So why can't I stop feeling this way Torn in two And I know I shouldn't tell you But I just can't stop thinking of you Wherever you are You Wherever you are Every night I almost call you Just to say it always will be you Wherever you are

…I think maybe saying goodbye isn’t all bad. Maybe it means I’m making room for someone new.

All right, I wanted to tell her that when she said it was good-bye this morning I thought I was going to fucking die.

Of course it might have been some other city, had circumstances been different and the time been different and had I been different, might have been Paris or Chicago or even San Francisco, but because I am talking about myself I am talking here about New York. That first night I opened my window on the bus into town and watched for the skyline, but all I could see were the wastes of Queens and big signs that said MIDTOWN TUNNEL THIS LANE and then a flood of summer rain (even that seemed remarkable and exotic, for I had come out of the West where there was no summer rain), and for the next three days I sat wrapped in blankets in a hotel room air-conditioned to 35 degrees and tried to get over a bad cold and a high fever. It did not occur to me to call a doctor, because I knew none, and although it did occur to me to call the desk and ask that the air conditioner be turned off, I never called, because I did not know how much to tip whoever might come—was anyone ever so young? I am here to tell you that someone was. All I could do during those three days was talk long-distance to the boy I already knew I would never marry in the spring. I would stay in New York, I told him, just six months, and I could see the Brooklyn Bridge from my window. As it turned out the bridge was the Triborough, and I stayed eight years.

Now we will live!” This is what the hungry little boy liked to say, as he toddled along the quiet roadside, or through the empty fields. But the food that he saw was only in his imagination. The wheat had all been taken away, in a heartless campaign of requisitions that began Europe’s era of mass killing. It was 1933, and Joseph Stalin was deliberately starving Soviet Ukraine. The little boy died, as did more than three million other people. “I will meet her,” said a young Soviet man of his wife, “under the ground.” He was right; he was shot after she was, and they were buried among the seven hundred thousand victims of Stalin’s Great Terror of 1937 and 1938. “They asked for my wedding ring, which I….” The Polish officer broke off his diary just before he was executed by the Soviet secret police in 1940. He was one of about two hundred thousand Polish citizens shot by the Soviets or the Germans at the beginning of the Second World War, while Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union jointly occupied his country. Late in 1941, an eleven-year-old Russian girl in Leningrad finished her own humble diary: “Only Tania is left.” Adolf Hitler had betrayed Stalin, her city was under siege by the Germans, and her family were among the four million Soviet citizens the Germans starved to death. The following summer, a twelve-year-old Jewish girl in Belarus wrote a last letter to her father: “I am saying good-bye to you before I die. I am so afraid of this death because they throw small children into the mass graves alive.” She was among the more than five million Jews gassed or shot by the Germans.

Most autumns, the water is low from the long dry summer, and you have to get out from time to time and wade, leading or dragging your boat through trickling shallows from one pool to the long channel-twisted pool below, hanging up occasionally on shuddering bars of quicksand, making six or eight miles in a day's lazy work, but if you go to the river at all, you tend not to mind. You are not in a hurry there; you learned long since not to be.

I was able to capture the beauty of a sunrise, The joy of a child's laughter, The warmth of a summer breeze, The sparkle of a starry night. I was able to take these moments and make them last, preserving them in my heart and mind. But the day you left without a word of goodbye, darkness erased the light of my memories.

I hadn’t seen Krista Wallace for several years and the emotions it stirred when I did set eyes on her again surprised me. We had been a summer fling on the beaches of Ecuador, a brief yet sweet encounter before my intoxicating affair with Josselyn began. Perhaps the intensity of the latter had unfairly overshadowed the former.

But he had come here today to stand one final time at the top of one particular signal bridge that he had come to think of as his own, and tell another summer goodbye.

How do I say goodbye to this man? The one who tricked me with his lies and won me over with his loyalty.

There’s no way I can be around him all summer and not want to be consumed by him. But I also don’t want to be consumed by someone I’m just going to have to say goodbye to eventually.

Well, I learned to cook. At my age," she told him. "What's next? Art therapy? Anyway, I've had quite a time of it this summer, and who knows what eases down on any road. Come, Rain. A quick goodbye, and off you go." "Goodbye," said Rain to the Lion, and then to the woman. "Not to them," said Glinda, "To me." She turned eyes that were saucerly upon Glinda. "Mum?

In a Time" In a time of secret wooing Today prepares tomorrow’s ruin Left knows not what right is doing My heart is torn asunder. In a time of furtive sighs Sweet hellos and sad goodbyes Half-truths told and entire lies My conscience echoes thunder In a time when kingdoms come Joy is brief as summer’s fun Happiness, its race has run Then pain stalks in to plunder.

Yeah, You rocked my world forever I know you still remember How we felt before Yeah, We should be together 'Cause nothing could be better Than the way we were Baby, let's go back to the way we were Let's turn back the clock This time we'll take it slow You can stay the night, This time I won't let go And when the morning comes, We can start all over, over again Why did we say goodbye? Let's go back tonight

And I'll see you. We're not done seeing each other." "At the end of the summer, maybe, I can meet you somewhere before school," I say. "Yeah," she says. "Yeah, that's a good idea." I smile and nod. She turns away, and I am wondering if she means any of it when I see her shoulders collapse. She is crying. "I'll see you then. And I'll write in the meantime," I say. "Yes," she says without turning around, her voice thick. "I'll write you, too." It is saying these things that keeps us from falling apart. And maybe by imagining these futures we can make them real, and maybe not, but either way we must imagine them. The light rushes out and floods in.

Saying Goodbye to Very Young Children" They will not be the same next time. The sayings so cute, just slightly off, will be corrected. Their eyes will be more skeptical, plugged in the more securely to the worldly buzz of television, alphabet, and street talk, culture polluting their gazes' dawn blue. It makes you see at last the value of those boring aunts and neighbors (their smells of summer sweat and cigarettes, their faces like shapes of sky between shade-giving leaves) who knew you from the start, when you were zero, cooing their nothings before you could be bored or knew a name, not even you own, or how this world brave with hellos turns all goodbye.

...Alice kept thinking about that passage from one part of life to another. She kept thinking, Is this it? Will I know if it is? Will I be ready?Will I make it across? Will I chicken out? Will I know when I'm saying goodbye? When I look back, will I still be able to see what I've left behind? She thought she would know when it happened.But now, as she looked around, she wondered if it was really like that at all. Maybe it happened in a million different ways, when you were thinking of it and you weren't. Maybe there was no gap, no jump, no chasm. You didn't forget yourself all at once. Maybe you just looked around one time or another and you thought, Hey. And there you were.

It hit me who they were talking about. Mrs. Neville. My Mrs. Neville. The teacher who’d said I should enter the short-story contest this year. Good-bye, she’d said as I’d left her room on the first day of summer. Not see you next year or see you in September, but a firm and final good-bye. She must’ve known she was dying, as she sat behind that desk in summer’s light, and she had known that for her there would be no new class of grinning young monkeys in September.

These days, I haven't been sleepin' Stayin' up playin' back myself leavin' When your birthday passed and I didn't call Then I think about summer, all the beautiful times I watched you laughin' from the passenger's side And realized I loved you in the fall And then the cold came, the dark days When fear crept into my mind You gave me all your love and all I gave you was goodbye So this is me swallowin' my pride Standin' in front of you sayin' I'm sorry for that night And I go back to December all the time It turns out freedom ain't nothin' but missin' you Wishin' I'd realized what I had when you were mine I'd go back to December, turn around and change my own mind I go back to December all the time

I like the disaster of the night sky, stars spilling this way and that as if they were upturned from a glass. I like the way good madness feels. I like the way laughter always spills. That's the word for it. It never just comes, it spills. I like the word 'again'. Again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again. I like the quiet sound a coffee cup makes when it's set down on a wooden table. So hushed. So inviting. Like morning light yawning through the window and stretching out onto the kitchen floor. I like the way girls' lips look like they're stained with berries. I like the way morning light breaks like a prism through the empty wine bottles on our dusty apartment floor. Glasses empty except for the midnight hour. I like the way blueberries stain my fingers during the summer. I like the way light hits your eyes and turns it into a color that doesn't exist anywhere else other than in this moment. I want it all. I want the breeze to call my name as it rushes down my street, looking for me. I want to feel grass underneath my bare feet and I want to feel the sun kiss freckles onto my cheeks. I want to hear you yell hello as you make your way towards me, not goodbye as you have to go. That's just a little bit about me.

My face wasn’t the same as I remembered, either. I saw a squarer jaw then I used to have, and my hair was bleached out from the summer’s sunshine. Not half bad, I realized. Standing there, I looked a long time at myself. Which was precisely why there were no mirrors in Paradise.

That summer morning in the Lower Downs began as usual for Reuben Pedley. He rose early to have breakfast with his mom before she left for work, a quiet breakfast because they were both still sleepy. Afterward, also as usual, he cleaned up their tiny kitchen while his mom moved faster and faster in her race against the clock (whose numerals she seemed quite unable to read before she’d had coffee and a shower). Then his mom was hugging him goodbye at the apartment door, where Reuben told her he loved her, which was true—and that she had no reason to worry about him, which was not. His

I am nine. We are bored and Karen is dying. We drove to Austin that summer so Sarah's dad- who described Karen as /the great and impossible love/ of his life, who taught us the word /lymphoma/ and then, the concept of the prefix, how it explains where the tumor lives- could say goodbye. The house is a rind spooned out by the onset of death, what's left in the medicine cabinet full of razors & we are hungry & alone & sitting on the living room floor where the light from a naked window slices the hardwood like a melon, brandishes each, individualfuzz on my scabbed calf a field of erect, yellow poppies & we have been alive as girls long enough to know to scowl at this reveal & what better time than now to practice removal. Once, I watched my mother skin a potato in six perfect strokes I remember this as Sarah teaches me to prop up my leg on the side of the tub and runs the blade along my thing, /See?/ she says, /Isn't that so much better?/ Before we left Albuquerque her father warned us, /She will have no hair/ a trait we have just begun to admire except, of course for the hair he is talking about we hold against our necks, that which will get us compliments or scouted in a mall, eventually cut off by our envious sisters while we sleep.

In a time of secret wooing Today prepares tomorrow's ruin Left knows not what right is doing My heart is torn asunder. In a time of furtive sighs Sweet hellos and goodbyes Half-truths told and entire lies My conscience echoes thunder. In a time when kingdoms come Joy is brief as summer's fun Happiness its race has run Then pain stalks in to plunder.

In a Time In a time of secret wooing Today prepares tomorrow's ruin Left knows not what right is doing My heart is torn asunder. In a time of furtive sighs Sweet hellos and sad goodbyes Half-truths told and entire lies My conscience echoes thunder. In a time when kingdoms come Joy is brief as summer's fun Happiness, its race has run Then pain stalks in to plunder.

Todd wrapped his arm around her. They stood together in silent awe, watching the sunset. All Christy could think of was how this was what she had always wanted, to be held in Todd's arms as well as in his heart. Just as the last golden drop of sun melted into the ocean, Christy closed her eyes and drew in a deep draught of the sea air. "Did you know," Todd said softly, "that the setting sun looks so huge from the island of Papua New Guinea that it almost looks like you're on another planet? I've seen pictures." Then, as had happened with her reflection in her cup of tea and in her disturbing dream, Christy heard those two piercing words, "Let go." She knew what she had to do. Turning to face Todd, she said, "Pictures aren't enough for you, Todd. You have to go." "I will. Someday. Lord willing," he said casually. "Don't you see, Todd? The Lord is willing. This is your 'someday.' Your opportunity to go on the mission field is now. You have to go." Their eyes locked in silent communion. "God has been telling me something, Todd. He's been telling me to let you go. I don't want to, but I need to obey Him." Todd paused. "Maybe I should tell them I can only go for the summer. That way I'll only be gone a few months. A few weeks, really. We'll be back together in the fall." Christy shook her head. "It can't be like that, Todd. You have to go for as long as God tells you to go. And as long as I've known you, God has been telling you to go. His mark is on your life, Todd. It's obvious. You need to obey Him." "Kilikina," Todd said, grasping Christy by the shoulders, "do you realize what you're saying? If I go, I may never come back." "I know." Christy's reply was barely a whisper. She reached for the bracelet on her right wrist and released the lock. Then taking Todd's hand, she placed the "Forever" bracelet in his palm and closed his fingers around it. "Todd," she whispered, forcing the words out, "the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face to shine upon you and give you His peace. And may you always love Jesus more than anything else. Even more than me." Todd crumbled to the sand like a man who had been run through with a sword. Burying his face in his hands, he wept. Christy stood on wobbly legs. What have I done? Oh, Father God, why do I have to let him go? Slowly lowering her quivering body to the sand beside Todd, Christy cried until all she could taste was the salty tears on her lips. They drove the rest of the way home in silence. A thick mantle hung over them, entwining them even in their separation. To Christy it seemed like a bad dream. Someone else had let go of Todd. Not her! He wasn't really going to go. They pulled into Christy's driveway, and Todd turned off the motor. Without saying anything, he got out of Gus and came around to Christy's side to open the door for her. She stepped down and waited while he grabbed her luggage from the backseat. They walked to the front door. Todd stopped her under the trellis of wildly fragrant white jasmine. With tears in his eyes, he said in a hoarse voice, "I'm keeping this." He lifted his hand to reveal the "Forever" bracelet looped between his fingers. "If God ever brings us together again in this world, I'm putting this back on your wrist, and that time, my Kilikina, it will stay on forever." He stared at her through blurry eyes for a long minute, and then without a hug, a kiss, or even a good-bye, Todd turned to go. He walked away and never looked back.

If you would wait and’ve won my heart Still we know the end is yet to come there’s no hiding we cant escape the darkness and end of Love,darkness will chase us and theywill always win. everything comes to an end .ones you taste the goodness,tails the end So goodbye LOVER It sfunny that We both know how it will end but we still kept fighting I’ll wait for you…Im sorry but Im not strong There’ s no point loverboy. Let me give you some fact No matter what you do ,where you hide it will always haunt you…sorrow my dear Im talking ‘bout Just like the others.Idont wan t to become a memory cause Im telling you Im different If you promise to wait I promise to you that I will always be yours and I will never hurt you Remember you told me nothing is impossible when you love someone Don’t tell me you love me,dear,love is one of the most unpredictable thing in the world. Why so careless? Im sorry,believed me I tried..thank you cause I felt the warmth of your love and it felt so good at the same time I felt so weak ,your love is like the summer that melts my cold heart but Im still in the battle field and soldiers cant be weak at the time of battle they have to be tough! Your words says you can fix me and I thought hey why don’t we give him a chance and I realized no one can fix me it is only me who can fix myself because this is my life.

Douglas looked off at the twilight sky. "Frozen statues, every single one of you, the next three minutes!" said John. Douglas felt john walking around him even as he had walked around John a moment ago. He felt John sock him on the arm once, not too hard. "So long," he said. Then there was a rushing sound and he knew without looking that there was nobody behind him now. Far away, a train whistle sounded..... ... And then he felt himself walking across the lawns among all the other statues now, and whether they, too, were coming to life he did not know. They did not seem to be moving at all. For that matter he himself was only moving from the knees down. The rest of him was cold stone, and very heavy. Going up the front porch of his house, he turned suddenly to look at the lawns behind him. The lawns were empty. A series of rifle shots. Screen doors banged one after the other, a sunset volley, along the street.

Paint me a small railroad station then, ten minutes before dark. Beyond the platform are the waters of the Wekonsett River, reflecting a somber afterglow. The architecture of the station is oddly informal, gloomy but unserious, and mostly resembles a pergola, cottage or summer house although this is a climate of harsh winters. The lamps along the platform burn with a nearly palpable plaintiveness. The setting seems in some way to be at the heart of the matter. We travel by plane, oftener than not, and yet the spirit of our country seems to have remained a country of railroads. You wake in a pullman bedroom at three a.m. in a city the name of which you do not know and may never discover. A man stands on the platform with a child on his shoulders. They are waving goodbye to some traveler, but what is the child doing up so late and why is the man crying? On a siding beside the platform there is a lighted dining car where a waiter sits alone at a table, adding up his accounts. Beyond this is a water tower and beyond this a well-lighted and empty street. Then you think happily that this is your country - unique, mysterious and vast.

It was in this atmosphere of boozy wistfulness and dizzy exhaustion that Sylvia- along with Carol LeVarn- took her suitcase to the Barbizon roof and tossed each slip, stocking, sheath, and skirt into the night sky. "We took the elevator to the roof," recalls Carol, who refrained from tossing her own clothes off the Barbizon. "We stood there by the empty pool, which was all lit up. We were laughing. All this absurd phony fun we were having was over….We were just kind of giddy. I didn't see it as Sylvia throwing off a false self. It was just fun- a 'good-bye to all that' sort of thing.

Sounds of The Fleetwoods singing, “Come Softly to Me” and Robin Luke singing “Susie Darlin” and Little Anthony popping the vocal on “I Ran All the Way Home.” Were they all hits in that summer of 1960? Yes and no. Mostly yes. In the long purple evenings when rock and roll from WLAM blurred into night baseball from WCOU, time shifted. I think it was all 1960 and that the summer went on for a space of years, held magically intact in a web of sounds: the sweet hum of crickets, the machine-gun roar of playing-cards riffling against the spokes of some kid’s bicycle as he pedaled home for a late supper of cold cuts and iced tea, the flat Texas voice of Buddy Knox singing “Come along and be my party doll, and I’ll make love to you, to you,” and the baseball announcer’s voice mingling with the song and with the smell of freshly cut grass: “Count’s three and two now. Whitey Ford leans over ... shakes off the sign ... now he’s got it ... Ford pauses ... pitches ... and there it goes! Williams got all of that one! Kiss it goodbye! RED SOX LEAD, THREE TO ONE!” Was Ted Williams still playing for the Red Sox in 1960? You bet your ass he was—.316 for my man Ted. I remember that very clearly. Baseball

Harry said good-bye to you,” he said. “Didn’t you hear him?” “It doesn’t matter,” Harry muttered to Mr. Weasley. “Honestly, I don’t care.” Mr. Weasley did not remove his hand from Harry’s shoulder. “You aren’t going to see your nephew till next summer,” he said to Uncle Vernon in mild indignation. “Surely you’re going to say good-bye?” Uncle Vernon’s face worked furiously. The idea of being taught consideration by a man who had just blasted away half his living room wall seemed to be causing him intense suffering. But Mr. Weasley’s wand was still in his hand, and Uncle Vernon’s tiny eyes darted to it once, before he said, very resentfully, “Good-bye, then.

I press the blue glass triangle to my lips and smile for Matt, my best-friend-that’s-a-boy, my last goodbye to the brokenhearted promise I carried like my journal for so long. Somewhere below the black frothy ocean, a banished mermaid reads my letters and weeps endlessly for a love she’ll never know – not for a single moment. Before the trip, Frankie and I set out to have the Absolute Best Summer Ever, the summer of twenty boys. We’ll never agree on the final count – whether the boys from Caroline’s should be included in the tally, whether the milk-shake man was too old to be considered a “boy,” whether her tattooed rock star interlude was anything other than a rebound. But in the end, there were only two boys who really mattered. Matt and Sam. When I close my eyes, I see Sam lying next to me on the blanket that first night we watched the stars – the night he made me look at everything in a different way; the breeze on my skin and the music and the ocean at night. But I also see Matt; his marzipan frosting kiss. All the books he read to me. His postcard fairy tales of California, finally coming to life in Zanzibar Bay. When I kissed Sam, I was so scared of erasing Matt. But now I know that I could never erase him. He’ll always be part of me – just in a different way. Like Sam, making smoothies on the beach two thousand miles away. Like Frankie, my voodoo magic butterfly finding her way back home in the dark. Like the stars, fading with the halo of the vanishing moon. Like the ocean, falling and whispering against the shore. Nothing ever really goes away – it just changes into something else. Something beautiful.

Aksënov was a handsome, fair-haired, curly-headed fellow, full of fun and very fond of singing. When quite a young man he had been given to drink and was riotous when he had too much; but after he married he gave up drinking except now and then. One summer Aksënov was going to the Nizhny Fair, and as he bade goodbye to his family his wife said to him, “Iván Dmitrich, do not start today; I have had a bad dream about you.’ Aksënov laughed, and said, ‘You are afraid that when I get to the fair I shall go on the spree.’ His wife replied: ‘I do not know what I am afraid of; all I know is that I had a bad dream. I dreamt you returned from the town, and when you took off your cap I saw that your hair was quite grey.’ Aksënov laughed. ‘That’s a lucky sign,’ said he. ‘See if I don’t sell out all my goods and bring you some presents from the fair.

What to Make a Game About? Your dog, your cat, your child, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your mother, your father, your grandmother, your friends, your imaginary friends, your summer vacation, your winter in the mountains, your childhood home, your current home, your future home, your first job, your worst job, the job you wish you had. Your first date, your first kiss, your first fuck, your first true love, your second true love, your relationship, your kinks, your deepest secrets, your fantasies, your guilty pleasures, your guiltless pleasures, your break-up, your make-up, your undying love, your dying love. Your hopes, your dreams, your fears, your secrets, the dream you had last night, the thing you were afraid of when you were little, the thing you’re afraid of now, the secret you think will come back and bite you, the secret you were planning to take to your grave, your hope for a better world, your hope for a better you, your hope for a better day. The passage of time, the passage of memory, the experience of forgetting, the experience of remembering, the experience of meeting a close friend from long ago on the street and not recognizing her face, the experience of meeting a close friend from long ago and not being recognized, the experience of aging, the experience of becoming more dependent on the people who love you, the experience of becoming less dependent on the people you hate. The experience of opening a business, the experience of opening the garage, the experience of opening your heart, the experience of opening someone else’s heart via risky surgery, the experience of opening the window, the experience of opening for a famous band at a concert when nobody in the audience knows who you are, the experience of opening your mind, the experience of taking drugs, the experience of your worst trip, the experience of meditation, the experience of learning a language, the experience of writing a book. A silent moment at a pond, a noisy moment in the heart of a city, a moment that caught you unprepared, a moment you spent a long time preparing for, a moment of revelation, a moment of realization, a moment when you realized the universe was not out to get you, a moment when you realized the universe was out to get you, a moment when you were totally unaware of what was going on, a moment of action, a moment of inaction, a moment of regret, a moment of victory, a slow moment, a long moment, a moment you spent in the branches of a tree. The cruelty of children, the brashness of youth, the wisdom of age, the stupidity of age, a fairy tale you heard as a child, a fairy tale you heard as an adult, the lifestyle of an imaginary creature, the lifestyle of yourself, the subtle ways in which we admit authority into our lives, the subtle ways in which we overcome authority, the subtle ways in which we become a little stronger or a little weaker each day. A trip on a boat, a trip on a plane, a trip down a vanishing path through a forest, waking up in a darkened room, waking up in a friend’s room and not knowing how you got there, waking up in a friend’s bed and not knowing how you got there, waking up after twenty years of sleep, a sunset, a sunrise, a lingering smile, a heartfelt greeting, a bittersweet goodbye. Your past lives, your future lives, lies that you’ve told, lies you plan to tell, lies, truths, grim visions, prophecy, wishes, wants, loves, hates, premonitions, warnings, fables, adages, myths, legends, stories, diary entries. Jumping over a pit, jumping into a pool, jumping into the sky and never coming down. Anything. Everything.

Here are some of the things I learned while living in New York: That you shouldn’t interpret direct and efficient communication as rudeness. That a sidewalk operates by the same rules as a highway: if you walk slow, walk in the right lane, and if you have to stop, pull over. I learned that once the late June sunshine hits the streets, pretty girls in summer dresses come out of the woodwork. I also learned that summer brings with it the inescapable smell of marinating garbage and human urine. In the city, you can get weed delivered to your front door by a hipster on a bicycle or pick up a screwdriver in the dead of the night at a twenty-four-hour hardware store. I learned that the city has resilience like no other city during natural (or man-made) disasters, and that the people of New York generally coexist peacefully, which is impressive, considering there are 27,352 people per square mile.

TAKING LEAVE Of the unhindered motion in the million swirled and twisted grooves of the juniper driftwood lying in the sand; taking leave of each sapphire and amber thread and each iridescent bead of the swallowtail's wing and of the quick and clever needle of the seamstress in the dark cocoon that accomplished the stitching. Goodbye to the long pale hairs of the swaying grassflowers, so like, in grace and color and bearing, the nodding antennae of the green valley grasshopper clinging to its blade; and to the staircase shell of the butter-colored wendletrap and to the branches of the sourwood making their own staircase with each step upward they take and to the spiraling of the cobweb weaver twirling as it descends on its silk out of the shadows of the pitch pine. Taking leave of the sea of spring, that grey-green swell slowly rising, spreading, its heavy wisteria-scented surf filled with darting, gliding, whistling fish, a current of cries, an undertow of moans and buzzes, so pervasive and penetrating and alluring that the lungs adapt to the density. Determined not to slight the knotted rockweed or the beach plum or the white, blue-tipped petals of the five spot; determined not to overlook the pursed orange mouth of each maple leaf just appearing or the entire chorus of those open leaves in full summer forte. My whole life, a parting from the brazen coyote thistle and the reticent, tooth-ridged toad crab and the proud, preposterous sage grouse. And you mustn't believe that the cessation which occurs here now is more than illusory; the ritual of this leave-taking continues beyond these lines, in a whisper beside the window, below my breath by the river, without noise through the clearing at midnight, even in the dark, even in sleep, continues, out-of-notice, private, incessant.

After The Persian" 1 I have wept with the spring storm; Burned with the brutal summer. Now, hearing the wind and the twanging bow-strings I know what winter brings. The hunt sweeps out upon the plain And the garden darkens. They will bring the trophies home To bleed and perish Beside the trellis and the lattices, Beside the fountain, still flinging diamond water, Beside the pool (Which is eight-sided, like my heart). 2 All has been translated into treasure: Weightless as amber, Translucent as the currant on the branch, Dark as the rose's thorn. Where is the shimmer of evil? This is the shell's iridescence And the wild bird's wing. 3 Ignorant, I took up my burden in the wilderness. Wise with great wisdom, I shall lay it down upon flowers. 4 Goodbye, goodbye! There was so much to love, I could not love it all; I could not love it enough. Some things I overlooked, and some I could not find. Let the crystal clasp them When you drink your wine, in autumn.

She knows she should feel excited about her acceptance to Emory and the promise of spring break. She should feel infinite and hopeful, like the growing earth around her. Like the sunlight, which stretches longer each day, asking for one more minute, one more oak tree to shimmer on. Like the late March mornings, which arrive carrying a gentle heat, rocking it back and forth over the pavement in the parking lot, letting it crawl forth over the grass and the tree roots, nurturing it while it is still nascent and tender, before it turns into swollen summer. But while the whole earth prepares for spring, Hannah feels a great anxiety in her heart, for something dangerous has grown in her, something she never planted or even wanted to plant. It’s there. She knows it’s there. If she’s truthful with herself, she’s probably known it all along. But now, as the days grow longer and the Garden District grows greener, she can actually see it. It has sprung up at last, and it refuses to be unseen. She tells herself it’s passing. It’s temporary. It’s intensified only because she’s a senior and all of her emotions are heightened. It’s innocent. It’s typical for a girl her age. It’s no more or less of a feeling than everyone else has had at 17. But deep down, deep below the topsoil of her heart, she knows it’s not. Still, she pushes it down inside of her, buries it as far as it can go, suffocates it in the space between her stomach and her heart. She tells herself that she is stronger, that she can fight it, that she has control. That no one else has to know. I can ignore it, she thinks. I can refuse to look at it. I can stomp on it every time it springs up within me. So she lies to herself that everything is normal. That she is normal. She carries herself through the end of the school week by refusing to acknowledge it. By refusing to align her heart with the growing sunlight and the nurturing heat and the flowering plants and the tall, proud trees. ‘You alright?’ Baker asks, when Hannah says goodbye to her after school on Friday. Hannah stomps, buries, suffocates, wishes for death. ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘I’m good.

As the bus headed into the night, I noticed that the bench seat in the back of the bus was vacant. So I took my blanket and pillow, made my way to the back and stretched out. Rumbling along I was vaguely aware of the stops we made, but the night passed quickly. Eventually it started getting light outside, but looking around I saw that most people were still sleeping, including a Negro woman wearing a Navy uniform. She was a WAVE and must have boarded the bus sometime during the night. I had no idea where we were, but it didn’t matter as long as we were heading west. Slowly the passengers woke up and looked around, including the young Negro lady. I never had a problem talking to people, so, striking up a conversation, I discovered that she was going home to Oklahoma City. I told her about being a cadet at Farragut and that I was now heading to California for the summer. Time always goes faster when there is someone to talk to and we had the entire back of the bus to ourselves. The first inkling that something was wrong came when we got off the bus for a rest stop in Little Rock, Arkansas. The driver told me that it wasn’t fitting to sit in the back of the bus with a Negro. I was dumbfounded, and coming from the North, I didn’t understand. I tried to explain that this woman was wearing the uniform of her country, but it didn’t make any difference. That’s just the way it was in the South! We ran into the same kind of bigotry in the diner at our next rest stop, but before I could make an issue out of it, she hushed me up and explained that she just wanted to go home and didn’t need any problems. The two of us sat in the section for “Negroes Only,” where they served her but not this white boy, which is what I was called, along with other derogatory remarks. Never mind, I shared her sandwich and I guess they were just glad to get rid of us when we boarded the bus again. Behind me, I heard someone say something about my being a “nigger lover”.... Big as life, I sat in the back again! This time no one said anything and everything seemed forgotten by the time she got off in Oklahoma City. Another driver came aboard and took over. Saying goodbye to my friend, I got up and moved back to the seat I had had originally -- the one over the big hump for the rear tires!

I never had a problem talking to people, so, striking up a conversation, I discovered that she was going home to Oklahoma City. I told her about being a cadet at Farragut and that I was now heading to California for the summer. Time always goes faster when there is someone to talk to and we had the entire back of the bus to ourselves. The first inkling that something was wrong came when we got off the bus for a rest stop in Little Rock, Arkansas. The driver told me that it wasn’t fitting to sit in the back of the bus with a Negro. I was dumbfounded, and coming from the North, I didn’t understand. I tried to explain that this woman was wearing the uniform of her country, but it didn’t make any difference. That’s just the way it was in the South! We ran into the same kind of bigotry in the diner at our next rest stop, but before I could make an issue out of it, she hushed me up and explained that she just wanted to go home and didn’t need any problems. The two of us sat in the section for “Negroes Only,” where they served her but not this white boy, which is what I was called, along with other derogatory remarks. Never mind, I shared her sandwich and I guess they were just glad to get rid of us when we boarded the bus again. Behind me, I heard someone say something about my being a “nigger lover”.... Big as life, I sat in the back again! This time no one said anything and everything seemed forgotten by the time she got off in Oklahoma City. Another driver came aboard and took over. Saying goodbye to my friend, I got up and moved back to the seat I had had originally -- the one over the big hump for the rear tires!

I’m saying that at the end of the summer she let the blind man run his hands over her face, said good-bye to him, married her childhood etc., who was now a commissioned officer, and she moved away from Seattle.

Let's Play Cat & Mouse It was a beautiful day as he walked the streets, filled with flowers of summer and the green of the trees. The sun just rising, the freshness in the air. In the distance, something rolled across the road, pushed and played with by a fluffy, tiger like cat. It rolled, and was poked and pushed to the edge … Stop that, Stop that, Stop that now … it’s tiny little legs on the floor as it stretched as tall as it could, arms in front, as it looked up at fluffy … No, No, No You can’t catch me … Shocked and amazed was fluffy … As his morning breakfast, scurried and hurried along the side of the road … Goodbye, Good Day, have a wonderful Day … As they continued their day … No more time for Let’s play cat and mouse. by Natasha Parker Copyright © 2014 by Luisa Natasha Parker

Darren’s been quiet since we stripped down to our bathing suits and waded into the water, like his mind is somewhere else. I make small talk, but he gives a lot of halfhearted, one-word answers. “Is something wrong?” I finally ask. Darren cups a hand and repeatedly scoops at the water, letting it leak out between his fingers. “What do you see happening a few weeks from now?” I try to meet his eyes, but he’s focused on the water. “What do you mean?” “I mean at the end of summer, when you have to leave. What happens after that?” I open my mouth to speak, but not a sound comes out. I want to say a million things. I want to say that watching him walk off that train, then realizing I had no way to get in touch with him, nearly killed me. That I can’t believe I’m expected to say goodbye to him again. That I think about him. A lot.

Darren’s been quiet since we stripped down to our bathing suits and waded into the water, like his mind is somewhere else. I make small talk, but he gives a lot of halfhearted, one-word answers. “Is something wrong?” I finally ask. Darren cups a hand and repeatedly scoops at the water, letting it leak out between his fingers. “What do you see happening a few weeks from now?” I try to meet his eyes, but he’s focused on the water. “What do you mean?” “I mean at the end of summer, when you have to leave. What happens after that?” I open my mouth to speak, but not a sound comes out. I want to say a million things. I want to say that watching him walk off that train, then realizing I had no way to get in touch with him, nearly killed me. That I can’t believe I’m expected to say goodbye to him again. That I think about him. A lot. What comes out instead is, “I finish high school and you start college.” “Right…right.” He nods and exhales, sinking into the water up to his neck and running a dripping hand through his still-dry hair. Follow your heart, not your head. Regret nothing. “Darren,” I begin, swallowing the lump in my throat and forcing myself to keep eye contact. I need answers. I can’t go back home without knowing exactly what there was or is between us. “Why did you come back here?” No response. “Why did you ask me to go to Pompeii with you guys? Why did you get so upset you couldn’t even talk to me when you saw Bruno kiss me good-bye? Why did you completely freak when Nina took our picture together? Why did you come back here? I need--” I groan and ball my hands into fists at my sides. “I need you to tell me what you want me to think, Darren. What am I supposed to take away from all this?” “I don’t know, Pippa, okay?” He yanks at his hair. “I…needed to see you again. When I’m not with you, all I think about is you and your shy little smile and the two freckles on your right cheek. Your terrifying green eyes.

Beau was going to have a cow. But when did Beau’s opinion ever keep Zac from doing what he wanted?

The truth. I don’t even know what that is anymore. Be patient. Pray about it, and listen to God. He’ll help you figure it out.

Everything about her was so… delightfully unexpected. And he could listen to that drawl of hers all night.

Maybe you should say something to her, man. Like what? You know what. Like, ‘Gosh, best buddy, I’ve fallen in love with you, and I know you don’t feel the same way, but will you put your life on hold for me until my tour’s up?’ Something like that, you mean? You might want to soften it up a little, but yeah.

If only she would’ve been there to catch Trace before she’d fallen into the epic mess that kept her away so long. The mess that cost her saying goodbye to her father before he died. “Kat and Wind should arrive tomorrow. I think Bri’s more excited than

When you say things like that, it makes me dread when we have to say goodbye. I wasn’t expecting to end the summer with a broken heart.” Samson tilts his head, looking at me with complete candor. “Don’t worry. Hearts don’t have bones. They can’t actually break.

Without you I could never have done it,” she says. “Without you at my side these past few weeks, I would never have been brave enough to admit to myself what was coming for Hank. I never could have broken the rules of Hank’s room. I never could have said a proper good-bye. And I never could have brought him to the beach at dawn patrol.” I can feel her eyes on me, but I can’t look back.

It’s that Friday at the end of September when a storm blows in on a warm, muggy morning and it rains all day, but the rain clouds part for a crisp, bracing late afternoon and you know summer has finally lost its grasp. That Friday. It’s been one of those improbably perfect days when all the universe’s tumblers click into place. Every joke of yours kills. Everyone’s a little funnier than usual. Everyone’s a little more insightful and quick. One of those days when you feel like you’re going to be young and live forever. One of those days that feels perpetually like being at the top of the arc while you’re swinging on a swing set.

It was splendid to have four seasons. The first summer produced so many hours of both beaming sun and bellowing rain that it seemed to add up to more than twenty-four hours in a day. Everything was green as a fairytale. Autumn was sharp and red, the sloping fields half-hidden in the morning by white fog. In the evenings, unseen bonfires scented the air as crickets shrilled their goodbyes to the heat. In the winter, it snowed with such thorough confidence that it seemed white Christmases must be the norm (they weren’t). And just when Mór and Niall had grown bored of hiding from the cold in the farmhouse, spring ferns uncurled in the forest, crocuses peeped out from under the newly repaired porch, and a new year’s sky washed clear and fresh-faced above.

When I really asked myself a question, I still responded, here there was still something to be wrested from me, from this heap of straw that I have been for five months and whose fate, it seems, is to be set alight in the summer and to burn away before the spectator can blink. If only that would happen to me! And it should happen to me ten times over, for I don’t even regret the unhappy time. My condition is not unhappiness, but it’s not happiness either, not indifference not weakness, not fatigue, not interest in anything else, so what is it then? The fact that I don’t know is probably connected with my inability to write. And this is something I think I understand without knowing its cause. For whatever things occur to me occur not from the root, but beginning somewhere toward their middle. Just let someone try to hold them, let someone try to hold and cling to a blade of grass that only starts growing from the middle. Perhaps some can, Japanese acrobats, for example, who climb a ladder that isn’t resting on the ground but on the upturned soles of a partner lying on his back and isn’t leaning against a wall but goes straight up into the air.[ 5] This is more than I can manage, not to mention the fact that my ladder doesn’t have even those soles at its disposal. That’s not all, of course, and such a question still isn’t enough to make me speak. But each day at least one line should be pointed at me as people are now pointing telescopes at the comet.[ 6] And if I would then appear once before that sentence, lured by that sentence, as I was last Christmas, for example, when I had gone so far that I could only barely contain myself and when I really seemed to be on the last rung of my ladder, which, however, stood steadily on the ground and against the wall. But what a ground! what a wall! And yet that ladder didn’t fall, so firmly did my feet press it against the ground, so firmly did my feet raise it against the wall. Today, for example, I committed three impertinences, toward a conductor, toward a superior of mine, well there were only 2, but they’re plaguing me like stomach pains. Coming from anyone they would have been impertinences, all the more so coming from me. Thus I went outside myself, fought in the air in the mist and worst of all no one noticed that I committed, had to commit, the impertinence as an impertinence toward my companions too, had to bear the right expression, the responsibility; but the most awful thing was when one of my acquaintances took this impertinence not as a sign of a certain character but as the character itself, called my attention to my impertinence and admired it. Why don’t I stay within myself? To be sure, I now tell myself: look, the world lets you strike it, the conductor and your superior remained calm as you left, the latter even said goodbye. But that means nothing. You can attain nothing when you abandon yourself, but what do you miss anyhow in your circle. To this speech I respond only: I too would rather receive a beating within the circle than myself give a beating outside it, but where the devil is this circle? For a while I did see it lying on the earth, as if sprayed there with lime, but now it just hovers around me, indeed doesn’t even hover.

Barbecues, beach days, & those long, lazy summer nights—hello, summer! It's time to bask in the sun, flip burgers like a pro, & enjoy endless evenings under the stars. Say goodbye to your winter woes & hello to sandy toes, tan lines, & ice-creams. Whether you're hitting the waves, grilling up a storm, or just lounging with a good book, summer’s got it all. So grab your shades, crank up the tunes, & let the good vibes roll. Here’s to the season of fun, sun, & a whole lot of awesome!

When you say things like that, it makes me dread when we have to say goodbye. I wasn’t expecting to end the summer with a broken heart.

Getting more into one-on-one therapy helped. It helped me to keep going, and it helped me to quit drinking. I almost feel it’s mandatory in my position. C’mon, buddy, you’ve got to get your head shrunk. Because your head gets so big, you need to shrink it. You need to go to some guy who’s going to tell you what you already know about yourself and pay attention to you for an hour straight. Which we all like. We all need a little attention. The first time I ever considered therapy was back in Boston, during my run in Richard III. I was staying at our director David Wheeler’s house for a few days, and he came into my room one morning to share some good news with me. “Hey, Al!” he said. “You just won the National Board of Review!” It was my first major film award for The Godfather. I said to him, in the softest voice I could summon up, “I was going to ask you, David, do you have the name of a psychiatrist? Because I need one.” That was my answer to him. Not that I was unhappy about winning such a prestigious award, but there were just other things on my mind. I saw a psychiatrist in Boston first, and then I went and got myself a guy in New York. I fell in love with the process, and I got to a point where I was in therapy five days a week at certain times. I highly recommend therapy if you’re at all leaning in that direction. Maybe you don’t need it five times a week, but give it a whirl. There’s an old story: A woman goes to a therapist for years. It’s her last appointment, because she feels she’s come to a great place in her life and is ready to move on. She wants to congratulate her therapist and say goodbye. So she tells him, “You’ve done so much good for me. I love my husband so much. Every day with my kids is just a joy. My work is going off the charts. I’m seeing a whole new side of life. You’ve been so wonderful. I never hear you speak. You just take it all in. Please tell me, how did you do it?” The doctor looks at her and says, “No habla inglés.” That’s an interpretation of therapy too; you need to talk and get it out. When I was living with Jill, before I ever went to therapy, I used to just sit in the bathtub alone and talk about things. I cleared my mind to myself. It’s an unusual relationship that you forge when you find a good doctor, someone you feel has that kind of commitment to you. And then they take some colossal amount of time off, and you don’t see them for the whole summer. I had one of those episodes when I couldn’t find my doctor. I might have been spared about twenty years of tsuris if I could have avoided it. It’s a good idea that when your psychiatrist goes away, you know where they are and you can call them when you’re in trouble. They need rest too. I can deal with, “Hey, my daughter’s graduating college, I’ll be out for a few days.” But going up a fucking river somewhere, to not be available for, like, six weeks? Come on, my life was capable of going right off the rails in far less time than that. I used to have recurring dreams in which I go to my psychiatrist’s office but can’t find him anywhere. He’s in the building, but he’s unavailable. I’m at the door, but there’s not even a buzzer I can press to let him know I’m there and no way to let me in. That was my dream. Now I have that feeling about my agent.

I wish I had more nights in the snow with you. I wish I had more of your summer days. I wish I had more evenings where we watched stupid movies and spilled wine over everything. But every time I’ve gotten to do that, I have loved it more than you even know.

Every summer, we used to clean and prepare the stoch for the overnight sleep accommodations. I imagined the atmosphere on those roofs - quiet, without noise or the sound of our home appliances. No buzzing fans, no refrigerator’s groans, and no air conditioner rattling. People enjoyed their sleep. I thought it was fun, at least on those nights when I used to sleep at my grandmother's in the transit camp. The overnight stays under the open sky were fascinating. Even there on the roof they must have watched the stars and their movements up in Heaven. I could not hide my smile when I remembered the time I was on my way to see my mother, and  I noticed a woman going up to sunbathe on the roof with only a tiny bikini on her body. It was in the summer months, in one of the adjacent streets. I realized that my mother was right. There were many uses for flat roofs. I remembered, of course, the biblical story of David and Bathsheba. Yes, King David made an intelligent use of the stoch. He was on one when not far away, while on another roof, Bath-Sheba pleasantly washed herself. It turns out that she knew how to take advantage of the roof too.

During that time, “Hurry up or we’ll be late” was commonly heard, either yelled from the kitchen or hissed while we scurried into the back row at church. There was too much to do in too little time. Life was a blur. And I thought everyone lived like this. That was until I read about “hurry sickness” in The Life You’ve Always Wanted by John Ortberg. My heart was skewered when I read that one of its symptoms is a diminished capacity to love. My children could have told you I had a problem. Only it wasn’t hurry sickness, it was hurry addiction. God dealt with my addiction to overload and hurry by taking it all away in a cross-country move. He made me go cold turkey as I said good-bye to working at my job, directing the children’s ministry, coleading the women’s ministry, being on the praise team, having my small group, leading Vacation Bible Study each summer, and more. God moved us 2,100 miles away—so far that I couldn’t even sneak back to lead a women’s event. I had no job, no church, and no friends, just lots of time. Since two of the boys were in school and the youngest had just started preschool, I had plenty of time to think and pray. And while there were lots of tears, I also experienced God in a new way. Very quickly, God connected me with Proverbs 31 Ministries. I started to learn that God had a better plan for my life than I did, and that I should look to Him for direction on my daily activities. I also learned that my first line of ministry was inside my home. I wasn’t completely cured of my hurry addiction yet, so I decided I would become the Best Homemaker Ever. And then I picked up a book called No Ordinary Home by Carol Brazo. And right in the beginning of the book I read something that brought about the biggest change in my life: If there were one biblical truth I wish I could give my children and lay hold of in my own deepest parts, it would be this one thing. He created me, He loves me, He will always love me. Nothing I do will change who I am. Being versus doing. The error was finally outlined in bold. I was always worried about what I was doing. . . . God’s only concern was and is what I am being—a child of His, forgiven, justified by the work of His Son, His Heir.[2] You know when you feel like an author has peeked into your living room window and knows exactly who you are? That’s what reading this was like for me. God wired me to be highly productive, but I hadn’t undergirded that with an understanding of my true identity. So in order to feel worthwhile and valued and confident, I was driven to take on more. More accomplishments equaled more worth. But it was never enough.

She described tirelessly to me how effective the flat roof was, and how it was useful. I found that the stoch was also used as a place to dry food, such as tomatoes. They used to put the tomatoes on the stoch, when they were cut, crushed, and soaked in large bowls. Soaking them on the roof would cause the fluid content to vaporize. What remained of the fruit was preserved in jars for regular use over time. To the tomatoes, which turned  very thick, we used to add a little salt, and it was enough to preserve them for a long time. They layed it out on the stoch and that was it. I laughed when she added a story from her childhood as well, when she used go up on the stoch with her friends and throw pottery off of it, throwing it down to shatter as a mark of the end of summer.

Stu believed in love at first sight. He believed in new romances and slow dances, the power of a sunset and the passion of two hearts becoming one. He believed in selfless, long-suffering love—the kind of love that prompted a man to abandon his career, dreams, and position on the church softball team in order to rescue the woman of his dreams. Stu believed in long walks on the beach and quiet evenings on the front porch; the nervous anticipation of a first kiss and the heartache of a final goodbye. But mostly Stu believed in love. Unconditional to-have-and-to-hold-till-death-do-us-part love. He had to. Stu was a romance writer. And romance readers loved all that about him.

Point the camera, so it actually looks like the museum is being lifted by my hands," Jacob said. I did as I was told, while Altar and All cheered. I do not know if he was satisfied, but when I look at the picture today, I see the life we lived at the Kibbutz, during the summer of 1966, till the end of our military service, more than three years later. In the Kibbutz, Alla found his place in the avocado grove. We did not know much about this fruit. I had never tasted it before, though I knew of its existence.

Harry moved toward the fire, but just as he reached the edge of the hearth, Mr. Weasley put out a hand and held him back. He was looking at the Dursleys in amazement. “Harry said good-bye to you,” he said. “Didn’t you hear him?” “It doesn’t matter,” Harry muttered to Mr. Weasley. “Honestly, I don’t care.” Mr. Weasley did not remove his hand from Harry’s shoulder. “You aren’t going to see your nephew till next summer,” he said to Uncle Vernon in mild indignation. “Surely you’re going to say good-bye?” Uncle Vernon’s face worked furiously. The idea of being taught consideration by a man who had just blasted away half his living room wall seemed to be causing him intense suffering. But Mr. Weasley’s wand was still in his hand, and Uncle Vernon’s tiny eyes darted to it once, before he said, very resentfully, “Good-bye, then.

Summer Rain" Whispering our goodbyes Waiting for a train I was dancing with my baby In the summer rain I can hear him saying Nothing will change Come dancing with me baby In the summer rain I remember the rain on our skin And his kisses hotter than the Santa Ana winds Whispering our goodbyes Waiting for a train I was dancing with my baby In the summer rain I remember laughing til we almost cried (There at station that night) I remember looking in his eyes Oh my love, it's you and that I dream of Oh my love, since that day Somewhere in my heart I'm always Dancing with you in the summer rain Doesn't matter what I do now Doesn't matter what I say Somewhere in my heart I'm always Dancing with you in the summer rain I can hear the whistle Military train I was dancing with my baby In the summer rain I can here him singing Ooh "Love Is Strange" Come dance with me baby In the summer rain I remember the rain pouring down And we poured our hearts out As the train pulled out I can see my baby Waving from the train It was last time that I saw him In the summer rain Every time I see the lightening Every time I hear the thunder Every time I close the window When this happens in the summer Oh the night is so inviting I can feel that you are so close I can feel you when the wind blows Blows right through my heart Every night and every day now Though I know you've gone away Somewhere in my heart I'm always Dancing with you in the summer rain

May was her favorite month. The pre-summer days meant saying good-bye to heavy clothing, and dispensing with the gloves she loathed, yet was forced to wear against her Raynaud’s syndrome.

I caddied—more accurately, I drove the golf cart—for Father O’Leary and his friends throughout most of the summer of that year. I was a good caddie because I saw nothing when they passed the bottle of whiskey and turned a deaf ear to yet another colorful reinvention of the words “motherless son of a bitch from hell” when the golf ball betrayed them.

So he sings,” he continued as if Denny had said nothing. “His solo mio, that with her in his life he is rich because she is so beautiful that she makes the sun more beautiful, you understand?” And at that he dropped the hoe, closed his eyes and spread out his arms wide and with the fading sun shining on his handsome face he sang: Che bella cosa è na jurnata 'e sole n'aria serena doppo na tempesta! Pe' ll'aria fresca pare già na festa Che bella cosa e' na jurnata 'e sole Ma n'atu sole, cchiù bello, oi ne' 'O sole mio sta 'nfronte a te! 'O sole, 'o sole mio sta 'nfronte a te! sta 'nfronte a te! It looked like fun. We dropped our tools and joined him, belting out something that sounded remarkably like Napolitano. We sang as loud as we could, holding on to each note as long as we could before we ran out of breath, and then we sang again, occasionally dropping to one knee, holding our hands over our hearts with exaggerated looks of deep pain. Although we made the words up, we sang with the deepest passion, with the best that we had, with all of our hearts, and that made us artists, great artists, for in that song, we had made all that art is: the creation of something from nothing, fashioned with all of the soul, born from joy. And as that beautiful summer sun set over Waterbury, the Brass City, the City of Churches, our voices floated above the wonderful aromas of the garden, across the red sky and joined the spirits in eternity.

The foundries were vast, dark castles built for efficiency, not comfort. Even in the mild New England summers, when the warm air combined with the stagnant heat from the machines or open flames in the huge melting rooms where the iron was cast, the effects were overwhelming. The heat came in unrelenting waves and sucked the soul from your body. In the winter, the enormous factories were impossible to heat and frigid New England air reigned supreme in the long halls. The work was difficult, noisy, mind-numbing, sometimes dangerous and highly regulated. Bathroom and lunch breaks were scheduled down to the second. There was no place to make a private phone call. Company guards, dressed in drab uniforms straight out of a James Cagney prison film [those films were in black and white, notoriously tough, weren’t there to guard company property. They were there to keep an eye on us. No one entered or the left the building without punching in or out on a clock, because the doors were locked and opened electronically from the main office.

You’re really going?” Except it wasn’t a question. “You’ve asked it of me,” Val reminded her gently, “and you are convinced Freddy will pester me literally to death if I don’t leave you to continue on with him as you did before, and you have forbidden me to call him out.” She nodded and leaned into him, fell into him, because her knees threatened to buckle with the magnitude of the loss she was to endure. Val embraced her, resting his cheek against her hair. “You’re a strong woman, Ellen Markham, and I have every faith in your ability to soldier on. I need to know as I trot out of your life that you will be fine and you will manage here without me. So”—he put a finger under her chin and forced her to meet his gaze—“tell me some pretty lies, won’t you? You’ll be fine?” Ellen blinked and obediently recited the requested untruth. “I’ll be fine.” “I’ll be fine, as well.” Val smiled at her sadly. “And I’ll manage quite nicely on my own, as I always have. You?” “Splendidly,” Ellen whimpered, closing her eyes as tears coursed hot and fast down her cheeks. “Oh, Val…” She clutched him to her desperately, there being no words to express the pure, undiluted misery of the grief she’d willingly brought on herself. “My dearest love.” Val kissed her wet cheeks. “You really must not take on so, for it tortures me to see it. This is what you want, or do I mistake you at this late hour?” “You do not.” The sigh Ellen heaved as she stepped back should have moved the entire planet. She wanted Val safe from Freddy’s infernal and deadly machinations, and this was the only way to achieve that goal. She had the conviction Valentine Windham, a supremely determined and competent man—son of a duke in every regard—would not take Freddy’s scheming seriously until it was too late. It was up to her to protect the man she loved, and that thought alone allowed her to remain true to the only prudent course. “You have not mistaken me, not now—not ever.” “I did not think you’d change your mind.” Val led her back toward the house by the hand. “I have left my direction in the library, and in the bottom drawer of the desk you will find some household money. I know you’d prefer to cut all ties, Ellen, but if you need anything—anything at all—you must call upon me. Promise?” “I promise,” she recited, unable to do otherwise. “And Ellen?” Val paused before they got to the stable yard. “Two things. First, thank you. You gave me more this summer than I could have ever imagined or deserved, and I will keep the memories of the joy we shared with me always. Second, if there should be a child, you will marry me.” “There will not be a child,” she murmured, looking back toward the wood. He was thanking her? She’d cost him a fortune and put his well-being in jeopardy, and he was thanking her? “I do not, and never will, deserve you.” “Promise me you’ll tell me if there’s a child?” Val’s green eyes were not gentle or patient. They were positively ducal in their force of will. “If there is a child I will tell you.” “Well, then.” Val resumed their progress. “I think that’s all there is to say, except, once again, I love you.” “I love you, too,” Ellen replied, wishing she’d given him the words so much more often and under so many different circumstances. “Good-bye, my dearest love.

Caring too much is a one-way ticket to graveyards and good-byes.

They spent three more long days in the whitened mountain ash trees on the whitened bay. Tatiana baked pies in Nellie’s big kitchen. Alexander read all the papers and magazines from stem to stern and talked post-war politics to Tatiana and Jimmy, and even to indifferent Nellie. In Nellie’s potato fields, Alexander built snowmen for Anthony. After the pies were in the oven, Tatiana came out of the house and saw six snowmen arrayed like soldiers from big to little. She tutted, rolled her eyes and dragged Anthony away to fall down and make angels in the snow instead. They made thirty of them, all in a row, arrayed like soldiers. On the third night of winter, Anthony was in their bed restfully asleep, and they were wide awake. Alexander was rubbing her bare buttocks under her gown. The only window in their room was blizzarded over. She assumed the blue moon was shining beyond. His hands were becoming very insistent. Alexander moved one of the blankets onto the floor, silently; moved her onto the blanket, silently; laid her flat onto her stomach, silently, and made love to her in stealth like they were doughboys on the ground, crawling to the frontline, his belly to her back, keeping her in a straight line, completely covering her tiny frame with his body, clasping her wrists above her head with one hand. As he confined her, he was kissing her shoulders, and the back of her neck, and her jawline, and when she turned her face to him, he kissed her lips, his free hand roaming over her legs and ribs while he moved deep and slow! amazing enough by itself, but even more amazingly he turned her to him to finish, still restraining her arms above her head, and even made a brief noise not just a raw exhale at the feverish end...and then they lay still, under the blankets, and Tatiana started to cry underneath him, and he said shh, shh, come on, but didn’t instantly move off her, like usual. “I’m so afraid,” she whispered. “Of what?” “Of everything. Of you.” He said nothing. She said, “So you want to get the heck out of here?” “Oh, God. I thought you’d never ask.” “Where do you think you’re going?” Jimmy asked when he saw them packing up the next morning. “We’re leaving,” Alexander replied. “Well, you know what they say,” Jim said. “Man proposes and God disposes. The bridge over Deer Isle is iced over. Hasn’t been plowed in weeks and won’t be. Nowhere to go until the snow melts.” “And when do you think that might be?” “April,” Jimmy said, and both he and Nellie laughed. Jimmy hugged her with his one good arm and Nellie, gazing brightly at him, didn’t look as if she cared that he had just the one. Tatiana and Alexander glanced at each other. April! He said to Jim, “You know what, we’ll take our chances.” Tatiana started to speak up, started to say, “Maybe they’re right—” and Alexander fixed her with such a stare that she instantly shut up, ashamed of questioning him in front of other people, and hurried on with the packing. They said goodbye to a regretful Jimmy and Nellie, said goodbye to Stonington and took their Nomad Deluxe across Deer Isle onto the mainland. In this one instant, man disposed. The bridge had been kept clear by the snow crews on Deer Isle. Because if the bridge was iced over, no one could get any produce shipments to the people in Stonington. “What a country,” said Alexander, as he drove out onto the mainland and south.

He retired the side and struck out the final two batters—Champ Summers and Lou Whitaker—to end the game. Bob Uecker’s radio call of the final out: “Good-bye, Detroit. Hello, New York” was an instant classic.

Same old, same old. Beau and Eden came in last night with Aunt Trudy. Sheriff stopped by the table to flirt for a while. That’s always entertaining.

The truth. I don’t even know what that is anymore. Be patient. Pray about it, and listen to God. He’ll help you figure it out.

Theme Song: Your Man – Down With Webster Bling Bling – ALTÉGO Let It All Go – Birdy & RHODES I Think You’re the Devil – Ellee Duke Legendary – Welshly Arms Wonderland – Taylor Swift Skin – Rihanna MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT – Elley Duhé Blue – Madison Beer Devil I Know – Allie X MONEY ON THE DASH – Elley Duhé & Whethan Way Down We Go – KALEO How Do I Say Goodbye – Dean Lewis Do Me – Kim Petras Crying On The Dancefloor – Sam Feldt, Jonas Blue, Endless Summer & Violet Days Wicked – GRANT Love and War – Fleurie Silence – Marshmello (feat. Khalid) Fire on Fire – Sam Smith