May This Moment Bring You Joy
And just like that, we’re closing in on the end of summer. Here in the borderlands of Arizona, our peaches are hanging heavy in the trees, the monsoon rains have turned the landscape an emerald green, and the nighttime temps have shifted just enough that we need to turn the ceiling fan off in the middle of the night.
When I was working seasonally, I remember the August grumps would take us all over. Burn out from being on the front lines of customer service would hit us and create an edge, as well as many creative slang words for tourists which I’ll spare you from here. But then almost magically, all that would fade about the end of August as fall would start to usher in. The new season felt like a bit of a new beginning, and it would buoy our spirits, and get us through the home stretch to the end of the season.
Since I stopped working seasonally, I don’t get that August irritability anymore. I do get a little sad though. Where I live now, down by the border of Arizona and Mexico, we actually have five seasons – fall, winter, spring, summer and monsoon season. Our summer is May and June – dry and hot – but then the prevailing winds change and instead of coming out of the west, they come from the southeast and up from the Gulf of Mexico and California. And this brings rain – big, loud, dramatic afternoon thunderstorms with torrential downpours. And in just a few weeks time, the landscape turns GREEN, and our gardens go nuts, and our washes run like rivers. And the smell in the desert after a rainstorm, well, if you haven’t experienced that, you must.
So monsoon season brings me great joy, and I mourn it when it passes. Not unlike how I used to mourn the end of my summer jobs, and having to bid farewell to what once were new friends but now felt more like family.
As I type this, our skies have clouded over, thunder is rolling around in the mountains, the breeze has picked up and the temperature is starting to drop. It will rain soon, and I will sit on my porch as I work, and smile, because right now, in this moment, it’s just all so perfect.
The present moment is the only moment available to us,
and it is the door to all moments.
~Thich Nhat Hanh
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