June Bugs In July

The clumsy buzzing startles against the deep quiet of the night.  I look up from my book towards the screen of the open window on this finally hot night.   Finally. 

A June bug.  First one I’ve heard, either here or back in the city.  This tardy summer has been reluctant to give up its opening rituals; still warm mornings, hot lazy afternoons, evenings that require open windows in order to sleep, and huge, bumbling June bugs, frantic to get to the light. 

I note the buzzing and bumping against the screen and add it to the list of late things.  Blueberries still in blossom when I arrived.  White pines just now releasing their pollen.  Day lilies still at least a week away from opening their colours to the sun.   Forty seven summers by these waters provides a solid base of data against which to compare.  Everything is late this year.  As if something’s off in the timeline.

 So am I.

It was so exciting last year to arrive so early in June.  It’s one of the benefits to the new way of doing life and ministry that began at that time, with its offering of more flexibility to allow for maximizing the cottage season.   This year, not so much.  We really didn’t get to open until mid June.  Then we left again for the city for ten days to celebrate a wedding, but also to catch up on some pressing preparations for other things happening this summer, things like a visit to Thailand, and some preaching assignments here at the cottage, back home at Highview, and also at the church in Thailand.  These, in and of themselves, were not unusual parts of my summer.  It’s just so much prep work has crunched into these later weeks.  Like a summer that’s late.  Something’s off in the timeline.

A shocking loss will do that.  Sort of holds you suspended in an opaque river of time that’s almost congealing, moving downstream in slow motion, unsure of the date and not really caring what day it is anyways.

How long as it been now?  Ten weeks I think.  But the calendar means nothing when it seems like it happened yesterday AND that surely we’ve been in this sluggish, disorientating river for months already, both at the same time.

The thing is, on this hot night with June bugs bumping noisily into the screen of my open window, I haven’t been here long enough (whatever long enough means) to feel what I know about all of this loss yet.  Normally (whatever normally means) I’ve already had some time for solitude and soul-settling way before now, and maybe, if I had, by now I would feel what I know, and know what I feel.  But I don’t.  Not yet.

Because it’s all late or slow or just hasn’t happened yet.  Next week family time will be complete, and I will wrap some quiet around myself and listen more deeply to this story.  But I don’t expect to get to normal any time soon.  Normal is a little ways off yet, a little ways longer down this congealing river of time and grieving and embracing and discovery. 

I note the lateness of the June bug and go back to my book.  His tardy arrival oddly comforts me.