The Days Gone By

I am feeling sentimental today.

Here's why: fall has come and the summer hours have passed into the category of days gone by.

I love summer and it is my favorite season, hands down. When you see something you love fading into oblivion, it is only right to have a little time of mourning.

The cricket singing outside my kitchen window agrees with me.

There will never be another summer when Parker is only one year old. He is at such a busy, curious stage and he loves marching around in his rubber boots. He has two pairs, so sometimes he marches around in green froggy boots and sometimes in yellow fireman boots. By next summer he may not fit either pair.

There will never be another summer when Gavin turns 4 years old and starts off to Sunday-school for the first time with such shining eyes. Or when he learns the joys of riding a two-wheeler without training wheels.

There will never be another summer when Elasa is working so hard through both the thrill and struggle of learning how to read. And by next summer she may not fit so well on the arm of our favorite brown recliner where she likes to sit while I read to her.

There will never be another summer when I am only ....... years old!!! (And if you don't already know how old that is, please put me somewhere in my late twenties! I would like that!)

Hopefully our family will be visited by many a lovely summer to come. Hopefully they will hold their own charm and memories.

Hopefully my beloved herb garden will be even bigger and better next year (and definitely have enough basil to make my own pesto!)

But today I am feeling sentimental. Some things in life will never be repeated and they cannot be reclaimed. This summer, with all it's golden glory, is one of them, and it makes me sad.

I am feeling sentimental today.

Will someone please pass the hankies?

(And just in case you enjoy poetry as I do, here is the poem from which I have stolen my title! It was ringing in my ears when I sat down and started writing.)

The Days Gone By

By James Whitcomb Riley 1849–1916

O the days gone by! O the days gone by!

The apples in the orchard, and the pathway through the rye;

The chirrup of the robin, and the whistle of the quail

As he piped across the meadows sweet as any nightingale;

When the bloom was on the clover, and the blue was in the sky,

And my happy heart brimmed over in the days gone by.

In the days gone by, when my naked feet were tripped

By the honey-suckle’s tangles where the water-lilies dipped,

And the ripples of the river lipped the moss along the brink

Where the placid-eyed and lazy-footed cattle came to drink,

And the tilting snipe stood fearless of the truant’s wayward cry

And the splashing of the swimmer, in the days gone by.

O the days gone by! O the days gone by!

The music of the laughing lip, the luster of the eye;

The childish faith in fairies, and Aladdin’s magic ring—

The simple, soul-reposing, glad belief in everything,—

When life was like a story, holding neither sob nor sigh,

In the golden olden glory of the days gone by.