Closed For the Season

As a teenager, these changes didn’t bother me. Truth is I’m not sure I even noticed. Wrapped up in school and sports and friends, I was too busy to admire the pink and orange sunsets dissolving into the ocean. However, after college, living at home for a short time before embarking into the “real world,” all I did was notice. It was a strange and auspicious period, stuck between childhood and adulthood, and those days, accentuated by the bareness of a cold, dark, endless winter, were like one long Sunday. For someone so programmed to be “doing,” it was hard to be still.

Now when I am on Cape Cod and pass those closed up ice cream shops and mini golf ranges, I understand the silence within, as though after working hard all summer they deserve this time off. Sure there are storeowners who work as hard in the off-season, repainting and preparing for next summer, for it’s a cycle, like the seasons themselves, but after all these years I’ve come to appreciate the off-season as it offers a kind of respite and permission to slow down. It doesn’t mean you stop tackling projects (winter is a great opportunity for indoor tasks), but the tempo need not be as rushed. I admit it’s a pace I am still learning to follow, but one I have come to respect.