Headed for the Barn

One summer in the far off past, we had a teen-age nephew who spent most of the summer in his upstairs bedroom with a broken leg.  This was before better cast and mobility  options.  He and a cousin were just old enough to ride the horses in a group of two.  They had gone by the tank and through a gate and then turned around for the barn.  One of them said, “I can beat you back!” and a race was on.  For the horses, it was being given their heads and pointing them toward hay and home, and no one had planned how to stop or slow them.  The horse cut short by the gate post, the boy went off, and that’s where the first sentence started.  Anticipation increases focus.

Heading in is my feeling about August.  Sometime around the first of the month, my inner clock sounds like the opening line of Lassie Come Home when the dog shakes herself and thinks, “It’s time. It’s time. It’s time to go for the boy.”  Summer is almost over, and it is time for school to start.  This feeling must be in my DNA.  My mother and daddy both taught.  I either went to school or taught. This time is the beginning of another year, one of always two numbers.  My first job was the 1957-58 year.  Stretching ahead are hopes and dreams for nine months.

Others of you have the same feeling at different times.  CPAs might start in early January.  Their push to times are April and October 15.  Gardeners and farmers start their year on that indefinable moment when the smell of the air and cessation of frost call to begin turning over soil and plant once again.  A new job after a time of interviewing and searching always marks,”The year I went to work for…”  Some years begin with the throwing out of the first baseball  or the cheers of a stadium crowd chanting for eleven first stringers jogging onto the field, helmets under their arms. From the horse to each of the above, an excitement carries us toward a goal.

Calendars that define our time are various, and man devised. Some of the world still holds on to the Julian calendar, a tweaking of the Roman calendar, though most have changed to Gregorian to adjust for celestial time variance.  Jewish religious calendars begin with year 1 of creation and move through lunar months. We look forward to a rhythm of life that is sometime individual to each of us.  What we really have daily is a nighttime to wrap up and anticipate what may be the gift of tomorrow.

For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.

Ecclesiastes 3:1