All things must change to something new, to something strange.

I thought, for a moment today, that I was having a mid-life crisis. But I’m a bit of a stickler when it comes to paying attention to using the right word for the right time. And crisis is simply too much for what I’m feeling. It carries a sense of urgency with it, of something that, if not dealt with, will be a problem.

What I’m feeling is more of a certain restlessness. Not because the weathers changing, really. After all this is Saskatchewan – fall actually starts sometime in August most years. I think it has more to do with fall being when the kids go back to school.

We have all spent our early years with our lives running to a particular cycle: the end of summer is the end of the cycle, fall is the start of the new one. Forget January first to December 31st, that’s merely a convenience. Everyone knows that life starts again when you’re back in school. Seeing friends you haven’t seen all summer, finding out who the new kids are, starting new classes, learning new things. And you’re one step closer to becoming an adult. All very new, all very exciting and all very definitely something I’m not doing.

All of which is exacerbated this year by The Boy starting university. Truly new for him, more than the change between elementary school and high school. I’ve done what I can as a parent and now I’m struggling to let him be an adult. He’s still my baby, but I’m working on not holding on so tightly. Which leaves me, of course, more time to wonder about what on earth am I doing.

So all the change going on around me – without involving me - is making me antsy. I’m not sleeping as well as I used to, and according to the kids my leg twitching is getting way out of hand. I feel like there is something I should be doing. There is, of course, I should be doing house work and yard work and Lord knows what else. But really I mean I feel like I should be doing something important. Something epic, as the young folk say. I just don’t know what that might be. I don’t even know what direction I should be looking. Or which direction I want to be looking! High time I headed to the kitchen. It’s canning season, and not only is working in the kitchen calming it is also, paradoxically, invigorating. Not to mention productive! Now I just need to find someone with concord grapes that they don’t use. Curse the school for ripping out the vines they had planted!

(Title is Longfellow, by the by. In case you were wondering).