What We Have

Here are Ethan and Henry blissfully frolicking in Hanalei Bay in Kauai last month. It seems like a year ago. It's hard to believe that summer is really over. I was back at work last week teaching, a little glum about the end of summer, feeling sorry for myself in a most unseemly way. Then hurricane Katrina came and all of the terrible aftermath this week - so wretched in so many ways that we cry when we read the paper. And I can’t help thinking about Daniel, this great fourteen-year-old kid - just a year older than Henry - who was in my summer photography class. He was from New Orleans and spending the summer here in California with his aunt. Just a week before the hurricane, we had a great Night Photography field trip for our last class meeting. Daniel said he would e-mail me some of his shots after he got back to New Orleans. He left the next day. Of course I am wondering about him daily, hoping that he and his family are safe. All I have is his e-mail address and no word yet. Just hope. Of course my self-pity has evaporated, my children are safely back at school, and I am once again jolted by the fragility of life, how much everything can change in a split second, how lucky we are to have every lovely mundane day. I'm loving the late summer sunflowers, the leaves just starting to change, the screech of bike tires outside my window, piles of new school papers which need to be signed, soccer and carpools and daily trips to the grocery store and no time to myself. Just living.

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