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The Tides of Summer, Emma & Me


Emma Mebane as a young girl afloat on a carefree summer day

Summer has been my least favorite season ever since I graduated from college. Growing up, of course, it was magical – my grandparents had a summer house at Harvey Cedars on Long Beach Island along the Jersey Shore, and I spent many a lazy summer day searching for whatever treasures the tides had left on the beach and experiencing that pleasurable mix of fear and exhilaration while body surfing at high tide. Nanna had her rules: don’t go to the beach until your chores are done, don’t go for more than two hours, don’t go when there’s a west wind because of flies, etc. But all things considered, it was a little like what I imagined heaven to be.

Fast-forward to graduating from college and taking on my first real job. What a shock it was to go from having all summer to kick around doing close to nothing, to having just two weeks of vacation for cramming everything I wanted to enjoy into much too short a time. When that first June came along, my desire to “go down the shore” was so strong that I almost quit my job!

Over time, I packed summer into hurried, small doses – I’d take a moment, for example, to smell the roses before hopping into my car for my daily commute to work. I’d walk to the local ice cream spot, but that first bite of butter pecan inevitably tasted like some wonderful experience that was then, not now. Time to relax became something I had to plan for and schedule, and the feel of summer as it should be faded farther and farther away. When my kids were born I remembered just enough about what summers should be like to feel guilty every time I dropped them off at day care, imagining all day long how awful it must be for them to have to attend the equivalent of summer school.

Eventually, summer became something of a hassle. When people asked don’t you just love summer? and aren’t you glad it’s hot enough to swim? I’d smile and nod, all the while thinking – sure, except I’m stuck in an office most days, it’s hot on the train, I’m soaked by the time I get to work, my hair is a limp disaster and I NEVER swim any more.

Life took over and any joy I had once found in summer was wrapped up in the distant, hazy memory of the trivial pleasures of childhood. I focused on fall football and soccer games, winter holidays and spring flowers. Summer was just a season to get through.

Tomorrow is July 8. Four years ago, my youngest child, Emma, died suddenly and unexpectedly one warm summer evening in her sleep. I dread this day, this week and this month all year long, but the feeling intensifies starting on Mother’s Day, the last day that the Geneva Mebanes were all together that year. I was leaving for a work assignment in London the next day, and I insisted on taking pictures of everyone – and further required that we all looked like we were having fun. I wanted to carry pictures of my happy family with me so I could put them all around my “flat” and my office at work.

See Donna’s Other “Wisps of Hope”

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WRITINGS ON THE WALL

  • Words are our most inexhaustible source of magic, capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it. –Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
  • Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictory word, preserves contact. It is silence which isolates. –Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
  • Watch your thoughts, they become your words. Watch your words, they become your action. Watch your actions, they become your habits. Watch your habits, they become your character. Watch your character, it becomes your destiny. –Anonymous
  • It is not of so much consequence what you say, as how you say it. Memorable sentences are memorable on account of some irradiating word. –Alexander Smith, “Dreamthorp,” On the Writing of Essays
  • Light dies before thy uncreating word; Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall, and universal darkness buries all. –Alexander Pope, The Dunciad
  • Honeyed words like bees, gilded and sticky, with a little sting. –Elinor Hoyt Wylie, Pretty Words
  • All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind. –Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam
  • My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts –never to heaven go. –Shakespeare, Hamlet
  • The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work and that writing didn’t require any. –Russell Baker, Growing Up
  • Life's like a movie. Write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending. –Jim Henson, The Muppet Movie
  • Man’s word is God in man. –Alfred Lord Tennyson, “Idylls of the King,” The Coming of Arthur
  • A writer lives in awe of words for they can be cruel or kind, and they can change their meanings right in front of you. They pick up flavors and odors like butter in a refrigerator. –John Steinbeck, “In Awe of Words”
  • To call forth a concept, a word is needed; to portray a phenomenon, a concept is needed. All three mirror one and the same reality. –Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, Traité Elémentaire de Chimie
  • And many a word, at random spoken, may soothe a wound or heart that’s broken. –Sir Walter Scott, Lord of the Isles
  • In the world of words, the imagination is one of the forces of nature. –Wallace Stevens, Opus Posthumous
  • “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.” –Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
  • Words are like leaves and, where they most abound, much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found. –Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism
  • I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long Words Bother me. –Alan Alexander Milne, Willie-the-Pooh
  • Good words are worth much … and cost little. –George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum
  • The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer’s radar and all great writers have had it. –Ernest Hemingway, Paris Review
  • Sweet religion makes a rhapsody of words. –Shakespeare, Hamlet
  • How long a time lies in one little word! Such is the breath of kings. –Shakespeare, King Richard II
  • The writer doesn’t want success ... The writer wants to leave a scratch on the wall of oblivion that someone a hundred or a thousand years later will see. Kilroy was here. –William Faulkner, Faulkner in the University
  • How many verses have I thrown into the fire because the one peculiar word, the wanted most, was irrecoverably lost. –Walter Savage Landor, Verses Why Burnt
  • Nature fits all her children with something to do, He who would write and can’t write, can surely review. –James Russell Lowell, A Fable for Critics
  • So is a word better than a gift. –Apocrypha
  • Word is a shadow of deed. –Democritus
  • In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. –The Common Gospel, “Eternal Word”
  • Omit needless words. –William Strunk, Jr, The Elements of Style
  • The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence. –Paul Simon, The Sound of Silence
  • Once a word has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled. –Horace, Epistles
  • Choice word and measured phrase… above the reach of ordinary men. –William Wordsworth, Resolution and Independence
  • Prête-moi ta plume pour écrire un mot. Lend me your pen to write a word. –Au Clair de la Lune

CLICK HERE to see these writings on the wall in a larger size.

Printing in Perspective

Printing in Perspective
Your life is made up of two dates and a dash. Make the most of the dash.

Make the most of your life - your dash! - and share what you learn with others.

The kingdom of God does not come with observation ... for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you. -Jesus the Messiah. The Common Gospel ("Final Journey)

LEARN ABOUT ‘LEGACY DOCUMENTS’

LEARN ABOUT ‘LEGACY DOCUMENTS’

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